


30 Days of Techienician

by AtlinMerrick



Series: Binary Stars: Techienician [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Techienician - Fandom
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, All chapters stand alone, And nope Matt is NOT Kylo Ren in disguise, By the way Techie's full name is Galacian Asha'Techk, M/M, Matt and Techie are in love love love, Matt's full name is Matthew Kee, Stories of sex and love and migraines joy serenity sneaking about...all the things...alllll of them, Techienician, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:08:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 31,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herein you will find stories of two men in love—Techie and Matt—and tiny tales of how they show that love. Sometimes the gestures are all pretty bracelets and prettier boners. Sometimes, well sometimes they're throwing things at the wall and setting fire to workstations. Sometimes.</p><p>If you want a quick grounding on who these two characters are, <a href="http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/146854302379/techienician-clan-techie-matt-the-radar">you can find it here</a>.</p><p>Thank you to unremarkableawakening, who prompted this 30 Days of Techienician challenge with <a href="http://unremarkableawakening.tumblr.com/post/148607798710/30-days-of-techienician">these lovely prompts</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Work Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shopping:_
> 
> Matt had promised Techie he wouldn't buy him another gift. He'd promised. But surely there had to be some work around...

It was forbidden. That's what he'd said, flat-eyed certain. "I forbid it."

For all the rarity of those words, for all that Techie had sounded awkward proclaiming them, he'd clearly brook no argument, so Matthew Kee had not argued.

What Matt had done was drop his chin to his chest, trying to think of a work around to Techie's prohibition.

"If you get around this somehow I'll throw whatever you give me into a trash compactor."

Matt tries not to scowl around Techie because it's the one thing that seems to unnerve his sweetheart. For all Matt's size and muscle, Techie—slim as a reed, with not one whit of physical fight in him—has never feared him. But Matt's scowl, well sometimes it makes Techie's mechanical eyes whir startle-wide, so when they had this conversation last night, Matt's chin stayed on his chest, which meant _he_ was startled when Techie collapsed sudden on their bed.

"You worked so hard to earn those extra credits Mattie," he'd whispered, breath huffing warm between them. "And I'll need a Mimbanite's four arms if you keep buying me pretty bracelets, okay?"

Matt had mumbled okay and Techie'd kissed him but now, two days later and standing alone in front of a wall hung lavish with peacock-pretty cloaks, Mattie wondered if there was _some_ sort of wiggle room.

Fingering the heavy hem of an indigo cloak shot through with iridescent green, he daydreamed Techie on their bed, wrapped up soft and pale, naked ankles peeping out from beneath the cloak's hem. He saw himself running thumbs along those sweet, delicate bones, imagined lipping at wriggling toes until Techie squirmed. Imagined _himself_ wriggling up and under that hem until Techie was keening.

_I forbid it._

Matt scowled at the shop keeper, not realizing he was doing it. Reflexively the man stepped back but Matt had already heavy-sighed himself away, drifting deeper into what passed for a mall on Mamendin.

Ten minutes later he was grinning like a loon and running big hands through thousands of glittering chatter beads. There were pretty ones of blue and red and green glass, some looked like black pearls, others like opals, still more that sparked like diamond and with his credit bonus he could afford a dozen times a dozen of the clingy things and oh they'd look so pretty scattered through Techie's long hair, catching fire from its fiery light.

_I forbid it._

Another scowl, another sigh, and ten minutes later Matt was looking wistfully at pretty puff cakes Techie would only throw into a trash compactor, glistening gelmeats he'd probably chuck out an airlock, and piles of blob candy that—well, wait, Techie didn't even like blob candy.

Mattie bought himself an Imperial pound of the orange-and-green ones, then proceeded to mope through the rest of the mall.

He was chewing the last of it, wondering if he should go back for some gelmeats, and thinking _kriff it, maybe I'll just buy a ton of sweets_ when it happened.

Right there, in front of him, the thing he'd been looking for without knowing he was looking for it. The ideal and absolute most perfect thing on which to spend his extra credits.

Crooning endearments at it before he'd even touched it Matt looked at the sales droid and started asking a half dozen breathless questions.

*

The _Accord_ is a military ship running in peacetime. It's staffed by tens of thousands of soldiers _and_ civilians, and like any military organization heavily reliant on civvies, it's the civvies who get the crap equipment. Which is to say that Matt's department, staffed completely by non-military, had decent enough stuff and it always got the job done, but most of it was a couple generations behind. And not one bit of it had—

"—really beautiful adaptive clutter maps! In five hundred and twelve colors! You should see them, Gala, sharp as anything, correct to within increments of a single meter. The droid said the video control time is in the hundredths of a second which is _nothing_ like my AD-33 because _that_ thing takes almost a minute when you really push it and end of cycle tests _always_ push it. Oh! Also! There's height feedbacks on the azimuth screen which the AD can't even do! And when—"

Curled on their bed, head cradled in the crook of his arm, Techie listened while Mattie raved. He hummed soft acknowledgements now and again, murmured encouragement each time Matt read out long passages from the equipment manual, he even asked a few questions.

It was probably about a minute after his third whisper of "keep going Mattie," that Techie's eyes fell shut and his breathing went slow and steady. Flipping round from belly to his side, Matt held the manual between them, and continued to softly read the best bits out loud.

It felt good doing that, sharing this thing he loved. Even if his sweetheart was asleep they were breathing the same air, their toes were touching, and Matt could feel the warmth of Techie's skin.

It was maybe ten minutes before Matt got to the bit in the manual about sequencing runs and processor speeds. By then Techie's eyes were dancing with dreams, so he never heard Matt whisper just inches from his pale face, "—and the best bit, baby? I can finish the end-of-cycle evals at my _work station._ I don't ever again have to go back in the middle of the night to see that they're done."

Though Techie rarely woke the evenings Matt took his big, warm self out of their bed to finish running the monthly maintenance tests, he knew Techie slept poorly those nights and Matt always felt bad about that. Why do you think Techie's got so many bracelets?

"I hope you like your present," Matt grinned, sleepy. He tucked the manual under Techie's softly-curled hand, laid his cheek on the other, quite pleased with himself.

He knew he'd find a work around.

—  
_Thus begins[30 days of Techienician](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/149752961169/30-days-of-techienician) (those are the prompts). I love these two so much. If you want a quick grounding on who these characters are, [you can find it here](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/146854302379/techienician-clan-techie-matt-the-radar). In the meantime, welcome and have fun and, if you're into it, I'm also doing [30 day of Sherlock](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7929796/chapters/18123319) using the same prompts. P.S. I hope you find this story has a bit of a "Gift of the Magi" feel—it's what I wished for it!_


	2. The Seeds of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Gardening:_
> 
> Throughout the vast galaxy there are many kinds of gardens.
> 
> Some, it turns out, grow best under the blaze of two very hungry suns.

A patient gardener can encourage the rarest things to grow.

Matthew Kee was born onto a poor planet. A world placed so imperfectly that it stood between Republic and Empire, each stripping that planet of its metals and crystals, each promising more care than they took as they waged their endless war.

Then came the ceasefire and the Galactic Concordance.

Being born within a few years of that treaty's signing didn't benefit Matthew or the children of his generation at all. It takes a long time for peace to return to rent earth, for toxic rivers to run clean again.

So it was in impoverished soil that the seed of Matthew Kee was planted thirty-four years ago. It was in wasted earth that he took root, scraggly and thin but never alone.

Because Matt wasn't the first child of conflict and he won't be the last. Surrounded as he was by others likewise poor, Matt found courage in the uniformity of his people's loss. Unlike so many others, Matthew used this courage to water and grow a garden. That garden was Matthew.

Determination took root in him first, watered with the sparse encouragement of his tired father, and Matt became the first of his family to study something more than mining. Focus flowered next and Matt became the only one he knew to leave Satsi. Hope came not very long after, its roots reaching greedy-deep, then blooming slow, slower, slowest. When hope finally blossomed, Matthew Kee became the first of his family to step aboard a starship.

Matt worked three years on the _Consensus,_ happy to have found a place. It wasn't until he was transferred to the _Accord_ that Matt realized he'd never found a people. And so Matthew realized he was lonely. With this new knowledge he began to run out of food to feed his determination, his focus, his hope.

For a year, then two on the _Accord_ Matt drifted, stayed quiet, made do, head down. Matt ceased to grow.

Then there was Techie.

Neither Matthew Kee nor Galacian Asha'Techk spoke a single word to each other those first weeks of their acquaintance, though they _did_ do other things. They smiled as they passed in corridors, blushed when they caught each other's eye, they found ways to work in the same locations.

Years later each man remembers that the other said something first though neither remembers what. What they do remember with crystal clarity was sitting side-by-side in a mess hall, excited to learn they both read the _Star Rise_ series when they were boys.

And suddenly, just like that, Techie and Matt weren't friends any more.

They were whatever you become when you get giddy-close and share your first kiss, all eager mouths and tongue, not at all shy. Even so, they leaned away from each other everywhere else, instinctually knowing that if they touched much more than hungry mouth to hungry mouth, they'd tangle together like thirsty vines, watered deep by the other's desire.

When someone across the hall catcalled they both turned away, Techie running fingers over his wet lips, Matt palming glasses back up his nose.

The thing is, if it'd been left to Matt's fragile courage, they'd have gone weeks and weeks without another kiss. Fortunately for them both, Gala had been sowing his own seeds since meeting Mattie, and now it was time to reap courage, a farmer collecting the fruits of weeks of midnight promises he'd made to himself.

So that second kiss? That came the day after the first, when they stood together on a gantry over the west hydroponics bay. There, perched above vast rows of shadowy plant beds, the vast room lit by nothing more than a few flickering LEDs far below, they waited together for Techie's unnamed 'surprise.'

The thing is, with the slant of the narrow walkway putting Techie right behind and a couple inches higher than Matt, they began to do what hungry, horny creatures have done in the dark since time immemorial: They began to nuzzle and murmur, whisper and touch, touch, touch, oh my how they touched.

Those touches were drink and food and light, so Techie and Matt basked, soaked up, _flowered._ Techie opened his arms and Mattie burrowed into them, face pressed into the skin of the softest neck in the world.

Techie bit at Matt's curls because Techie does so like to take tender things between his teeth and, as if he'd whispered exactly that, Matt sighed and tilted his head.

With a breathy pause Techie squinted into wide, dark eyes, then he gathered Matt's shaggy hair in his hands and teethed at the sweet skin of his neck, breath going stuttery when Matt grunted softly, over and over as if, given enough time and enough _teeth,_ he'd climax right there.

He didn't, but he did raise up on tip-toe and soft-bite back, a nip that turned into their third kiss, as a new 'sun' rose overhead—hundreds of lights flickering on as one, glowing soft at first, then bright and brighter.

The funny thing is that Galacian Asha'Techk and Matthew Kee never noticed that artificial sunrise, too busy planting needy kisses, tilling one another's hair into tangles with eager fingers, and watering one another's want with shy, shallow thrusts of the hip.

That was fine. In that chilly room, surrounded by the noiseless hum of engines deep, the sun rose up and it warmed them right through anyway.

_—  
In case you can't tell, I've fallen in love with Techie and Matt. If you're falling too, there are [more stories about them](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/30_Days_of_Techienician) by glorious writers taking part in this thirty-day challenge. Enjoy and please comment if you can!_


	3. Stupid and Stupider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Gift:_
> 
> Stupid means a lack, it means less, but these two men will give more because combined they're as brilliant as Techie's hair, as bright as Matt's smile. They are willing, as of right now, to give each other the gift of their awkwardness. Of naked needs, and desires too emotion-sharp to be spoken aloud but…
> 
> …they will speak them, they are, now, right here.
> 
> Here is where it starts.

"You didn't come."

"Techie, I was right there."

"Not _early_ you weren't. You were supposed to come early."

"I didn't know that, you should have asked. I was finishing those MTI radar tests."

Red brows drew petulant-low. "Why?"

"So we could have the holiday off together."

Techie's chin dropped to his chest, long hair curtained his face. He clutched his empty beer glass and said nothing.

*

"They'll be at _Latitude,_ that bar in S5? Would you come over? When you can?"

That's what Techie had said at the start of shift. That's not what Techie had _meant._

"Get there early," is what he wanted Mattie to hear. "And then sit next to me, close close close. Look at me. Talk to me. Laugh with me smile kiss me show everyone you picked me all right, would you do that could you please, would you?"

Though those are the words he meant, those weren't the ones he'd _said,_ so instead Matt worked overtime, putting three tests to bed so they could have High Day off together. When he finally got to the bar Techie was slumped with just one other tech in a back booth.

That tech had fled five minutes later, after Techie'd gone and sucked all the air clean out of the room with his silence.

In the past Matt would've been right behind the fleeing woman because Matthew Kee's been blamed for a shitload of things in his lifetime, the big guy's curse. This was _Techie_ though, and Matt was so bewildered by his sweetheart's silent anger that all he did was sit on the other side of a rum-sticky table and wait.

For nothing, as it turned out, because about the time Matt was going to say, "I don't understand," Techie stood, mumbled, "I'm tired," and cleared out.

Matt didn't go after him. If Techie said he was tired, that meant he was tired. That's how these things work in Matt Kee's world. A man said what he meant, right?

Except Matt's not a fool. He knows people are forever saying the opposite of what they mean, demanding to be understood anyway, but damn it, if a man walked away from him Matt was going to let the man _go._

Except he followed eventually. They shared quarters now, Mattie's bed was Techie's bed, and after a long day Matt _missed_ him.

What Matt kind of expected when he got home though, well it wasn't what he got.

*

"I'm sorry, Mattie."

That long curtain of red hair didn't do one thing to hush Techie's hushed words, but as Mattie stepped into their quarters, he moved quiet just the same.

He got onto the bed where Techie sat twisting wire—it was the same tree he'd been working on since they met, a big thing, thick trunked and broad—and he listened as Techie _talked_ to that wire.

"You asked me to ask," he said to the bright metal. "For what I want. But sometimes. Sometimes. That makes me feel…stupid."

Matt understood about that. Say a thing out loud and it's bare-naked real. Infer, imply, hope your mind's _read_ and your needs and wants wear the shadowy cloak of plausible deniability.

What Techie kind of expected in reply to this confession of his, well it wasn't what he got.

"I'm way stupider than you are."

Here's a thing: Techie's sometimes hot as his fiery hair. When Techie's cut his finger on a component or stubbed a toe on one of Matt's heavy boots then stopped right where he was and spewed foul-mouthed curses, mechanical eyes affronted-wide and glaring, Matt calls him "my little firestick," or "my skinny little flametree."

So Matt wasn't surprised when Techie dropped his wire, pushed his hair out of his face, and _scowled_ at him.

Forgetting for a second what they were even talking about, Matt suddenly wanted to touch Techie's eyes. They were more red-rimmed than usual, sore-looking and swollen from tears it was too hard to shed.

Yeah, well Techie didn't let him get derailed.

"You take that back, damn it!" he growled, as if the Matt who had insulted himself was a _different_ Matt, one Techie could take to task. Because _no one_ insults Mattie, not even Mattie, and the last person to do so found Techie staring at them, up close and personal, mechanical eyes click-click-clicking as noisy as Techie could make them because he _knows_ how creepy some people find that, especially when they think he can see things, see _into_ things and Techie's never gonna tell them that he can't.

Reflexively he did that now, one eyelid twitching as he click-clicked cranky at Mattie, pupils expanding slow and noisy, but Matt wasn't fooled, he knew what Techie was doing, so he grinned and said, "It's true, you should hear the things I think sweetie, nothing you could say to me would be stupider than the things I want to say to you."

He sometimes gets stuck in feedback loops, does Techie, moving haltingly from one thing to the next thing, so he frowned at Matt through thick ginger lashes, but finally his eyebrows went up at the middle in the way that makes Matt want to gurgle some sort of baby noises at him but Matt didn't let himself get derailed.

“Your eyelashes. Do you know what I think? I think they were woven from spiderwebs and dipped in gold and then licked into place by unicorns."

For a dozen tick-tock seconds no one said anything, and then Mattie said, "Stuff like that. I say stupid stuff like that _all the time._ About you. I mean all the time, baby. When you're sleeping sometimes, or when I see you up on the bridge in section eight, or across the mess hall, I whisper stuff like that out loud."

Techie said nothing, so Matt kept going.

"Or I think things, like how I wish I could somehow just live naked except your hair covering me here and there, because it's so soft and sweet. Which is weird because, I mean, if I'm wearing your hair, what would you have on your head?"

Techie still said nothing but he was leaning closer so Matt kept going.

"Once I took your underpants to work with me. Picked them up off the floor and put them in my pocket and I…" Matt faltered briefly. "…sniffed them all day."

Techie was blushing now, two splashy bits of red on the apples of his cheeks. It looked for all the world as if he'd stay silent but then—

"I stole a pair of your socks once. Those ones you put in your mouth that time you were laughing?"

It had been the end of their second date and they were tipsy and sitting cross-legged on the floor of Matt's tiny room. Techie'd done a funny voice, then another, and Matt laughed so hard he got _loud,_ so he long-armed a pair of socks from his clean laundry pile and shoved them in his mouth to shut himself up, but it just made him laugh _harder._

"I sucked on them. To get at your…your spit."

Was this supposed to be exciting? Matt wasn't sure, but he was definitely excited. Techie was too if the blush creeping down to his chest was any sign.

"Well, one time I thought you were going to kiss me in front of everyone and I got so nervous I was a little bit sick in my mouth."

"I once waited so long for you to come into the mess hall so I could just see you for a second that I peed my pants a little."

"That time you washed up in my quarters? You got a, uh, genital hair on my soap and I saved it."

"You sneezed on me once and I licked it off my arm."

"When you had a cold once I drank out of your glass so I could have your germs."

"Sometimes, when you're sleeping, I want you so so much that I get close and breathe in your breaths."

"Sometimes when you're sleeping and your cock's all soft and warm I kiss it."

"In a tenday it's Celta's birthday and I want to get there _with_ you, with your arm around me and your hand on my ass until everyone sees."

Matt blinked, then stuttered softly. "Ooh."

This is where it really starts, their 'stupid' words that aren't, because stupid means a lack, it means less, but these two men are giving _more_ because combined they're as brilliant as Techie's hair, as bright as Matt's smile. They're willing to give each other the gift of their awkwardness. Of naked needs, of desires too big or small or emotion-sharp to be spoken aloud but…but they _will_ speak them, they are, now, here, and always.

"Okay, yes. Before we go will you do that thing though, right here?" Matt touched his neck at the spot Techie likes to bite and suck. "So it shows?"

They're not going to be perfect at this. Sometimes Techie's going to forget to say what he wants and that'll annoy Matt way too much. They'll fight about it and then make up, just like they are now.

They'll be bad at the talking sometimes, but good at planning for the making up. Knowing they won't always get this right, they save up 'stupid' stuff.

Matt giddily wears a pair of Techie's underwear beneath his jumpsuit. They're way too small and pinch his dick and give him a rash, but that's all right because he can happily confess later. Techie secretly smears Matt's come across his wrists so he can lick at them when he's at work. Come dries itchy though and Techie scratches so distractedly he has to suck at the nail tracks to soothe them.

So it goes. Each _does_ a thing so later he can _say_ a thing out loud, bare-naked and real, stupid and stupider and so very, hand-on-ass, bruise-bite-on-neck _beautiful._

_—  
About Domhnall Gleeson my friend Janet said, “Those eyelashes though. They are woven by fairies from spiderwebs, dipped in molten gold and then licked into place by unicorns," and just like that I knew that the gift Techie and Matt give each other is words. Thank you Janet, you glorious creature._


	4. Head & Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kisses:_
> 
> "If I can do anything. Get anything. Just. I will."
> 
> Matt drops his voice again, murmuring gentle distraction.
> 
> "I will."

"Get the fuck off me, just get the fuck right off!"

In case his feelings are unclear, Techie throws his sneakers, his t-shirt, and his glare at the wall, shoves past Matt, and locks himself in the fresher.

With a sigh of relief Matt sits on the floor outside the door, listening to Techie curse and pace.

An hour later he wakes to find himself stretched out across the fresher's threshold, Techie protectively curled against his back and sleeping like the exhausted dead.

Matt turns toward his little love, presses a fingertip to his own mouth, then dots soft secondhand kisses all around Techie's sore, red-rimmed eyes.

*

"I said I'm fine Matt, just kriffing kriff the kriff off."

A sentence nearly thirty percent swears is a new Techie record though he tries fitting in a few more, scrubbing hard at his eyes and mumbling, "Fuck it you're worse than my pfassking mother."

Then he locks himself in the fresher.

With a relieved sigh Matt drags two pillows off their bed, lays down on the floor outside the fresher, and falls asleep.

When he wakes Techie's head is on _his_ pillow.

*

"Sweetie baby, please."

Like just about anyone, Techie can be a right royal shit when he's not well. His chief tells when his eyes hurt are swearing, taking offense, and locking himself in the fresher.

Matt prays for those things now.

Because swearing and door slamming take energy, they mean the pain is annoying but not horrible, they're a fucking _gift,_ Mattie knows that now as he begs without knowing for what.

Despite all Matt's diminutives, there's a lot to his long-legged love. But, tall as he is, right now he's curled up so small in their bed that Matt feels he could tuck him tiny and snug right against his heart. Instead he tucks himself against Techie's back and whispers.

"If I can do anything."

He drops his voice again, murmuring gentle distraction.

"Get anything. Just. I will."

Matt's mind darts here, there, wondering what he _can_ get, what he _can_ do. He wants to fidget himself active, useful, but he's been here before, one time before, and he knows there's nothing to do but this.

"Anything love, you just ask me, you just tell me and I will."

In the heaviness of Techie's silence Matt thinks maybe he should be quiet, but Techie told him after the last time that it was fine, the whispers were good, though he didn't really hear what Mattie said, only that it was soft and sweet.

So while Techie curls up and in, waiting for the pain behind his eyes to fade, Matt holds still everywhere but busy brain, trying to be a helpful sort of soft, a soothing sort of sweet.

"We can go down planetside and find something pretty when you get up. You know what? I always wanted us to have something that matches."

Techie's migraines used to come much more often the year he was fourteen and got his new eyes, now they're just occasional things but they scare Matt.

"I know it's silly but wouldn't it be nice? Maybe identical bracelets? Or something for our hair?"

Techie sluggishly reaches for then tucks Matt's hand to his chest. He knows the migraines his aging mechanical eyes give him scare Matt, that he gets frustrated with how little he can help. When Matt gets frustrated, sometimes he gets aggressive. Techie's seen him at it. When he thinks he's alone he fists his big, big hands and pounds at his own ribs; he used to scratch himself, too. Then Techie noticed.

Matt doesn't do any of that anymore, he promised that he wouldn't, but Techie knows Matt's triggers so he keeps him close when the migraines come so that the day after he doesn't find bruises on Mattie's body.

What Techie finds the next day, after they've both finally slept through it, is Matthew curled up so small, tucked tiny and snug against his heart.

"Good morning," Techie says, blinking slow at his sleepy giant, who blinks blearily back.

After awhile Techie pulls Matt's hands to his mouth and kisses each palm, each unbruised knuckle, then each finger, until one of them looks especially good. That one Techie starts to softly suck.

Mattie finds very good uses for his hands then.

—  
_The prompt was kisses and yes, I have a head canon for Techie's eyes that I'll put up eventually. Since my Techie grew up in the Star Wars world, not the one of "Dredd," how he got those sweetly-sad mechanical eyes happened a bit differently._


	5. Grunt Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Work:_
> 
> "Do you think we'd have worked before now?"
> 
> Slumped idle against a bulkhead while Matt applied his torch to a frozen bolt, Techie said, "We did work. All day. I saw you on deck four." Dropping his voice to a whisper and giggling against his knuckles Techie adds, "I saw your _penis_ on deck four."

Matthew Kee's got a habit of being quiet awhile, then just coming out with questions strange, obscure, or philosophical.

So, after an hour of dead silence but for rare grunts over a stuck instrument panel, Techie looked up when Matt suddenly said, "Do you think we'd have worked before now?"

Slumped idle against a bulkhead while Matt applied his torch to a frozen bolt, Techie said, "We did work. All day. I saw you on deck four." Dropping his voice to a whisper and giggling against his knuckles Techie adds, "I saw your _penis_ on deck four."

The bolt came free after another chesty grunt and Matt grinned wide at his sweetheart. Yes, yes indeed, Techie had seen Matt's penis at work today, because Matt had taken his penis out of his _pants_ at work today.

At fourteen, fifteen, or growth-spurt sixteen and suddenly towering, Matt would never have done anything so scandalous. _That_ Matt slouched himself small, answered questions with mumbles, avoided eye contact.

Then something happened. Matt went to study mechanical engineering, went offplanet, became a mech tech fourth class, then third, then second…and somewhere along the line he learned to be just bold enough, just brave enough. He learned how to be _him._

Matt removed the panel, wriggled a big hand into a small opening, flipped a couple switches off, then back on. A bank of fans overhead finally began to hum.

This morning his _him_ had frowned down from deck four's mezzanine after hearing the unmistakable thump of a skull bashing sharp into a console. Peering over the railing he saw Techie down below, rubbing at the back of his head. From Matt's vantage up high he quick-quick realized that the only person who could see him—if he looked—was his wounded little love.

That's when Mattie had his bright and shiny _penis_ idea.

So, quiet as anything he took his cock out of his pants and he waited for Techie to look. Matt can always get Techie to look. All he does is take a deep breath and go still.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, seconds went by, but just a few, for it wasn't long before Techie, still scrubbing his smarting head, felt that stillness and looked up. Quick-quick Matt waggled his penis and Techie laughed so sudden and so hard that he honked. Or snorted. Or something big and strange and so contagious three other techs giggled and didn't even know why.

Matt was long gone before anyone saw what started the joyful noise and now, four hours on Matt was finishing up an unexpected late shift, his ginger love stretched out lazy on the floor nearby while Mattie went philosophical.

"No, I mean, before now, before the _Accord."_ Matt chucked his tools in a pile, content to just roll them up in oiled canvas, but Techie put down his datapad, grunted upright, and crawled over, tutting.

Like a massive tree chopped willing, Matt collapsed beside his sweetie as Techie meticulously placed each tool in its assigned slot. "Five years ago or ten," Matt clarified, running a rough-skinned hand over Techie's leg. "Would we have worked do you think? Would we have got together?"

When Techie got the vongspawn virus and lost his eyes, he'd needed looking after. He. had. _hated it._ Not just for himself—though a newly-blind kid on a queue for mech eyes has to have help whether he likes it or not—but also on behalf of his mam. Every time she gave him something instead of getting something for herself, it humiliated and saddened him, it made him foul tempered.

The onslaught of puberty at the same time went on to create in Techie a perfect storm of shamed anger, a storm of which his mother took the brunt for a good couple years.

It wasn't until mam nearly lost a hand in a work accident that Techie got over himself. And learned something sacred. Being allowed to take care of someone you love? It's a gift of such grace that there are no words to properly frame it.

Mam allowed Techie to cut up her food, to button her cuffs, to zip up her boots. She let him buy her the fancy caf drinks she liked, she let him massage her hand when it ached. She even _asked_ for his help sometimes. Not often. Only just…

Techie sat up straight in much-delayed revelation.

…when she didn't really need it.

Techie rolled up Mattie's tool canvas, tied it tight, tight, tight, then held it in his hands and looked at it. This. Here. Now? Mattie didn't need his tools tidied. He always lets Techie do it anyway.

While Techie blink-whirred his thinky thoughts, Matt stretched out, rested his head on his crooked arm. He reached up, stroked Techie's hair, then made little clucking noises over the lump at the back that he purposely didn't touch.

Techie tilted his head, until his cheek rested in Matt's palm.

*

Matt grunted, but Techie didn't stop. The pain was small and almost sweet, so he kept grunting softly and Techie kept rubbing the lotion across his scraped knuckles. Because sometimes it's much easier for Matt to push his big hand _into_ a tight space than to tug it out again, but—

"I got at those switches, baby," he said with a curt nod at his own scratched skin. Got at the switches and got the damned fans running. Bloody knuckles or no, Matt called that a _result._

"You did," Techie said, leaning forward across their crossed ankles, as if Matt's sounds of satisfaction were a warm tide in which he could float. They were low, those noises, brought up from somewhere in the deep of Matt's chest. Techie was drunk on them.

"You like that."

Gaze swimming blue, Techie looked hungry into Matt's eyes.

"When I…" Matt grunted again, deep and darker because now he was doing it on purpose. "You like…" He did it again, low and short and _sexual._ He fell back on the bed, pulled Techie on top of him with legs wrapped loose around his waist.

As soon as Techie crawl-fell graceless on top of Matt, Matt _grunted._ Techie opened his mouth, placed it sloppy over Matt's and he captured the noises, swallowed them down.

There was a mess of rutting for awhile, of Matt lying there eyes closed, arms flung out and _those noises_ and the heavier Techie's breathing the more Matt made them until finally his baby grunted back.

"Off, off," Techie said, scrambling upright and dropping pants and underwear.

Even without contact Matt didn't stop, no, but the noises changed, each one high and begging now and they were fake, Techie knew they were fake, like some actor in a porn holo, he knew Matt was doing them to arouse him and that _it was working._

"Off, off, off," Techie chanted, quick-like tugging Mattie bare from the waist down.

Matt moaned a little at the feel of gently frantic fingers at his hips, he hummed, and then he grunted for real, low, low, _so low_ when Techie slid slick fingers into his ass, then a little later pushed in his cock.

Techie thrust in sweet little jabs because Matt liked that, it made him grunt for real now, low and raspy, it made him spread out his big body as if Techie's desire was sun on skin. "Ah," Matt grunted, "ah, ah, ah!" Faster and then faster though Techie's pace didn't change.

Then it did.

Techie stopped.

He stilled.

He _grunted,_ animal deep. He came, shuddering hard, then fell harder, all of an inch onto Matt's wide body, his own tremoring with sweet spikes of adrenaline shooting sharp through all of him.

He started to say something, but his mouth was too full of sleep suddenly, so he murmured something something, and then was out cold in seconds.

Matt wrapped his arms around Techie's soft shoulders. He closed his eyes and waited for two things.

After thirty seconds he felt the first. Techie started drooling warm and wet down his chest.

Thirty seconds later came the second. Techie's cock slipped out of his ass and something else drooled warm down Matt's body.

Matt took a deep breath, grunted, content.

He does wonder if they would have worked before now. Before they'd learned to be who they are.

Maybe. Maybe not.

The thing is? The precious grace of the thing is?

They work now.

_—_  
_I love these characters, I really do._


	6. Honestly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hair:_
> 
> It started with his hair.
> 
> Why shouldn't it though. Why shouldn't a man look at another man across a room and notice him because he has pretty hair?

If he's honest, it started the first time he saw his hair.

Why shouldn't it though? Why shouldn't a man look at another man across a room and notice him because he has pretty hair?

No one on level three has hair like Matt.

The military on board the _Accord,_ from cadet to officer, have to keep their hair above the ears and off the collar. Civvies don't and so some, like Matt, _don't._ Almost as soon as he was assigned to the ship, Matt started growing his hair out and it was nearly to his shoulders by the time Techie saw him. It was _because_ of that big, bright yellow mess that Techie saw him.

Because Matt doesn't keep his hands off it. _That's_ really why Techie noticed him. Matt's always _pushing_ it out of his eyes, _pulling_ on a hank of it, and it wasn't long before Techie turned down a corridor or entered a room, mech eyes whirring wide, gaze skip-skipping across heads to find—

—the pretty blond man. Touching himself.

Honestly, it was _that_ that Techie loved. Those strangely intimate moments he'd catch out of the corner of his eye, moments where Matt seemed to forget he wasn't all alone. Scrolling through test numbers on his display he'd run his fingers over and over through his bangs, or tug a curl toward his mouth to _mouth_ at it and oh the places Techie's mind went _then._

Bold as brass Matt would flick his tongue over the tip of a curl and Techie'd catch himself staring sidelong at the sinuous, wet motion of it. Or Matt would _suckle_ at his hair, _nurse_ on it until Techie was completely distracted by some very adult daydreams.

The funny thing is, he'd get so lost in half-watching Matt, that Techie didn't notice Matt watched him back.

What Matt would see were half-lidded eyes of the biggest, bluest blue. Fascinated, he'd watch the ginger man's gaze dance and it was so obvious his reveries were about something _good,_ because his chest would rise and fall quick, his cheeks blush rosy, and oh his pretty pink lips would pout until Matt got giddy.

Eventually they saw each other seeing, then they _let_ one another see.

Knowing Mattie was watching, Techie whispered to a computer just before turning it back on, and there it went, suddenly humming, flashing, _working._

Knowing Techie was looking, Matt reached a damaged servo mounted high not with a ladder but by pulling himself up to it with just the strength of his arms.

Well, all this watching left them both with a sweet itchy feeling all over, one they both needed to _scratch._

Then there they were in the mess hall, each veering toward the other for the first time and suddenly they were sitting side-by-side and talking and honestly, that was the end of that.

And the beginning of everything else.

—  
_I like to think that Mattie let his hair grow out to look like[Adam Driver's hair here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cr3rypbVMAASyZ1.jpg) only, of course, blond._


	7. Taking Mattie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Love:_
> 
> Sometimes, like tonight, like now, Techie takes Mattie.
> 
> It is take in the sense of those old, old Naboo romance holos, where some beautiful creature is carried off by some bold pirate and, in a lush hideaway, bodies are bared and pleasured.
> 
> But sometimes, again, like tonight, like now, taking Mattie means something else.

If you look deep into the genes of Galacian Asha'Techk and Matthew Kee, my, my but you will find yourself some surprises.

Peer down into his double-helix and in the pale and slender Techie you'll find the components for a warrior.

Given a different life he'd have been a bolder man, would Techie, a soldier perhaps, a leader, a general.

While, inside each of Matt's chromosomes there's something of the prince, the politician, maybe the prophet.

Had he been born elsewhere and when Matt would have taken well to the pampering that grows a man into someone both entitled and persuasive.

Neither man grew into those men, however, because neither led a life that fashioned them into warrior or prince. Yet inside Techie and inside Matt there are still the building blocks of those things.

*

Which explains how the not-general was right now commanding, "Take off your clothes, Matthew, and put on the robe."

Techie gestured to their bed and a caftan of cobalt blue. Worn thin in all the right places, smoothed soft by a dozen hands over many years, Techie had found the comfortable old thing in a back-city market.

Holding it up to his sweetheart's broad chest he'd said, "This. For you. When I take care of you." Techie had known nearly at the start what Mattie would sometimes need from him.

Compliant in that market all those months ago, Matt wasn't quite as compliant now, opening his mouth to speak but Techie spoke first. "No questions."

That was usually all it took for Matt, just the certainty that he understood what was expected. Without further hesitation Matt dropped his tool belt, shoes, and clothes into the wardrobe, sighing as he stripped away each.

Over long weeks or months of work, Matt will start to turn outward _and_ in. With the mounting demands placed on him by others, he grows taller somehow, broader, speaks more deeply and as he does these things there's something in him slowly diminishing, growing weaker and quieter. His genes built Matthew Kee the body of a leader, but leading has never made Matt feel strong.

After enough weeks or months of wearing a mantle that doesn't fit, Matt needs rest, Techie figured that out within weeks of starting their love affair. It's then Techie gives Matt the one thing for which he's desperate: Direction.

"Everything, take off everything."

Because Galacian Asha'Techk is able to direct.

He never knew that about himself until Mattie, didn't know he could have the straightest of backs, the flat diction of a man confident he'll be obeyed, that he could and would and _wanted_ the responsibility of leading.

Leading his precious army of one.

"Thank you Matt, now come sit down to dinner."

Wrapping the warm robe tight, Matt did as bid, taking his place at their small table, sighing again as they shared thick bread and hot soup. While they ate Techie talked about his day, keeping everything calm and easy and slow because Matt craved that. Techie's craving was to give it to him, as if it were something actual, able to be cupped in two palms and held out. _Here, have this still peace. Sup slow, my love, there's more, I will always have more for you._

"On the couch please," Gala said after dinner, and Matt went, slumping himself lazy onto their tiny sofa, while Techie took his place sitting behind him on the sofa back.

From there Techie finger-combed Matt's hair for a good long while. It had lost a lot of its curl as it grew shoulder-long, but the payback was how sweet it felt running over skin and through fingers. As Techie stroked, he asked about Matt's day and he listened. They stayed right where they were until Matt ran out of words, then stayed longer than that.

Taking care of Mattie didn't always look like this. Sometimes Techie bundled his boy up and they went down deep, to the "bubble," an accidental observation deck near the bottom of the ship. Hardly anyone went because it was always cold down in the bubble, shadowed as it was by the bulk of the ship.

They'd make of it an adventure, dressing warm and as often as not bringing too much sweet ice because it never melted, no matter how long they stayed down there, kissing, talking, or quite literally staring into space.

Sometimes Techie took Matt to the bar on S5, treating him like a princess, stroking and nuzzling him, bringing drinks until Matt was tipsy, then tugging him tall so they could dance to a slow song while Techie ran his hands up and down Matt's body.

Other times, like tonight, like now, as he pushed Matt's robe down his shoulders, Techie _takes_ Mattie.

It is take in the sense of those old, old Naboo romance holos, where some beautiful creature is carried off by some bold pirate and, in a lush hideaway, bodies are bared and pleasured.

Techie is not a pirate, nor does he have a hideaway, but he has and he will _take Mattie_ as if he does. And these are the truths about that:

Taking Mattie will never mean rough.

It will never mean pain.

It will never mean disrespect.

Taking Mattie will always mean taking _care._

Taking will always mean _giving._

Tonight it meant stroking skin and cradling his body close as Techie bathed him.

It meant crooning endearments so softly against the shell of a sweetly big ear that Matt shivered.

Taking Mattie meant welcoming his passivity, celebrating it, _needing_ it, then giving back insistent, determined, _bossy._

It meant saying, "Onto your belly Mattie," and expecting to be obeyed. It meant putting his mouth to that ear again and telling him, "Open your legs," and moving with the expectation that his lover already had.

Taking Mattie was always and ever about one thing. Love.

"Open, my love."

Techie doesn't use many endearments; they still feel too big in his mouth. But these times when he _is_ bigger, bolder, well the words fall easy and even as he asked, he gently bit the inside of Matt's thigh and spread them wide.

Matt hummed his acquiescence, tilting his hips up, needing no preamble because the robe and the dinner, the stroking and the bathing were _all_ preamble.

So Matt angled his hips up, Techie spread the cheeks of his ass, and he started to lick.

If for Techie taking Mattie means giving, for Matt it's the same. He takes the comforts of coddling, he takes the bits of herb-sweet bread fed to him by hand, he takes the pleasures lavished on his body, and in return he gives his control, his embarrassment, his shame.

So when Techie's tongue breached him, pushing into his ass deep, Matt moaned without reservation, breathy and high.

Each long, slow swipe of his tongue got a moan. Each slide of Gala's slicked finger inside him got one. It didn't matter to Matthew that the noises he made went squeaky when Techie pushed his tongue _and_ finger together into Matt's ass, it didn't matter to Matt that he was already so drunk on sex hormones that he was drooling and sweating, and it didn't matter to Matt that when Techie said, "I'm going to mount you now," he was shot through with such sharp pleasure he thought later that maybe he'd come a little.

"Turn over, yes, that's it…no, it's fine, you just stay like that angel," Techie ran a thumb over Matt's cheekbone, received a chesty laugh and the swipe of a tongue missing its target because Matt's eyes were squinched bliss-closed.

They stayed that way while Techie bent then pushed one of Matt's legs away, then slung the other over the crook of his own elbow. He slicked himself up awkwardly—should have done this first—settled, then pushed inside Matt with one long stroke.

The foreplay had been a soup spiced with the salt nettle Matt loves, loose braids weaved through his yellow hair, gelmeats fed to him from Techie's mouth. Now was for giving by absolutely taking his pleasure from Matt's body.

So Techie rocked into his lover quick and hard, quick and hard, moaning open mouthed, scattering kisses, whispering _yes baby, yes._ Lust drunk, Techie let everything narrow down to his own skin, the blood flushing it hot, the insistent thump of the pulse in his neck and his cock. He murmured, thick-tongued and hoarse _want_ and _god_ and _fuck oh fuck oh fuck._

He went at it until Matt's keening voice rose so high, someone passing in the corridor said, "What's that?" Until he could catch beads of sweat rolling down Matt's neck, until his lips were salty with it, until—"Kriff baby!—Matt hooked his arms under his own legs and pulled them high. That's when Techie's endearments stuttered along with his hips, he thrust deep with a groan and came.

Everything but the kisses stopped while the orgasm shivered through him, little pecks over and over, until his arms stopped shaking and his skin cooled. That was when Techie _bit,_ first one collarbone, then the other, and Matt knew what was coming next.

Pulling out slow with a groan and a sigh Techie slicked one messy kiss across Matt's cheek, then stilled, looked into Matt's eyes, found them unfocused, Matt's mouth open and dry from panting.

Kissing him wet, then laughing when Matt sucked on his tongue, Techie rose onto hands and knees and climbed, settling high around Matt's waist.

He waited there until Matt's gaze skittered up his belly, chest, to his big, blue eyes. "I want _everything,"_ Techie said. Matt smiled, baring clicking teeth, a dramatic little pantomime of an animal about to feed.

Satisfied, Techie slicked his hand, himself, and then Matt, breathing fast even before his lover's cock touched his ass.

The slide in was slow and gentle because it didn't matter what was going to come after, the start had to start right.

One thrust, two, three, enough for accommodating, for comfort, then Techie was mumbling some sort of growling noises and that was enough. Matt clamped his hands onto Techie's shoulders and with that leverage and feet flat on the bed he used Techie's body to take _everything._

That meant fucking hard-hard- _hard,_ fucking fast and deep and sloppy, it meant glazed, half-lidded eyes that saw nothing, but a body that felt everything, chasing sensation, sharp and hot and perfect.

"Gala Gala Gala," Matt chanted, sliding big hands round Techie's narrow waist so he could push him up just enough and _look._

Techie arched like a hissing cat so that Mattie could see where they came together, could watch it happen every time Matt fucked up into him, and was met by Techie rocking _down._

Forehead to forehead they watched and it was a suspended sort of perfect, addictive, and if it weren't for muscles starting to spasm in Matt's abdomen he'd have looked until he was too dizzy to see, too parched to swallow, but when he started shaking, Techie slid a skinny arm behind his neck to support him and tugged him close.

Matt fell back against the bed, taking his lover with him, then he pushed Techie away until he placed the flat of his palms on Matt's chest and started to ride.

He kept the strokes shallow, fast, and short, over and over, until Matt's hands slid from his hips, and his eyes fell closed, and the only sounds he made were whimpers. Then one, two, three more times and Techie took Matt in deep and _clenched._

Matt came, soundless.

*

When Techie woke an hour or two later, he was being used.

He didn't stop it. Just watched. Mattie has done this before.

Two big hands— _how can hands like that work right_ Techie wonders again, because Matt's hands always seem too big for common things like spoons or spanners—wrap around one of Techie's much smaller ones, Techie's index finger poking out and poking into Matt's belly.

Matt was creating artwork there with Techie's fingernail, marking his own pale skin red with scratches.

When he'd done this before the mark was a heart. Another time a crooked something meant to be kissing lips. This time Matt marked himself with something better, something that meant love in all the ways love could be shown, the giving by taking kind, the slow kind, the soup and kisses and sleeping close kind.

_Scratch, scratch, scratch, rising up red on Matt's willing skin, one word._

G A L A

_—_

_So, this story came about when a_secret_scribbler and I were talking about Techie "mounting" Matt, then about Techie "taking" Matt and what that would mean. This is what taking Mattie meant to me._


	8. Star Blossom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cuddles:_
> 
> "—and the best bit was that Eylah made me think of you," Techie said, loosely containing the wriggling bulk of Matt's body.
> 
> Suddenly aware that a comparison to an ugly, horned, freely-pooping lizard might not seem a compliment, Techie explained...

Matt saw Techie from a dozen meters distant.

He did not like what he saw.

Everywhere around him there were children running and creatures basking in the light of double suns, there were the flowers on the Gorsa trees glowing orange in the summer light, there was a sea of pretty park grass, but none of that mattered because Techie.

Because Techie was sat on the ground like a child, long legs bent either side of his hips, head down down down, chest and face hidden by his hair, the curl of his body, and all Matt could feel was the coldness of adrenaline in his belly, all he could hear was his own agitated hum.

_What's wrong who hurt you what's wrong who hurt you, no, no…_

Running across paths and around slow-moving people Matt was down on his knees beside his sweetheart seconds later and then still. "Baby," he whispered, "Sweetheart what's—"

Everything turns in seconds. Tick-tock the worlds spin, moons set, double suns rise, and bone-weakening fear becomes barking laughter because nothing was wrong, no one was hurt, Techie was looking up now and grinning so wide Matt was pretty sure he could count all of his teeth.

"She's so _soft,"_ Techie said, hands cupping a bulge in his t-shirt that turned quickly to a very unpretty lizard's face peeping out of the collar of that t-shirt. Techie held out his hands and the green creature slowly emerged from her cocoon inside his clothes and settled herself across his curled palms.

"They like being cuddled," Techie said, glancing at the plump Cana sitting on the grass a meter distant, who nodded in benign agreement. For all her roundness and blueness, her big grin and a pair of similar lizards sitting on her broad lap, Matt hadn't even seen the Cana woman. He nodded a polite frown back, adrenaline he didn't need still sharping his face with worry.

"Hey," Techie said, "Can my boyfriend please hold her please?"

Again the Cana nodded, her ears wiggling with her smile, so a few seconds later Matt was holding a stump lizard for the first time. Immediately the small reptile did what her kind do: She nuzzled at the folds of Matt, pushed her face between his fingers, through the gap of a sleeve, under and around, until Techie made a clucking sound and handed Matt a flower.

"It's a star blossom," he said, "Eylah likes to eat them."

The moment the blossom was near the reptile, the reptile was on the blossom. She tucked in with gusto, as if her belly wasn't already full with the two she'd had from Techie's hand. For all her ungainly appearance—limbs too big for her narrow body, a lopsided pair of small horns on her head, three snaggle teeth—she ate with slow delicacy and cleaned her hands and mouth thoroughly after.

Then she pooped on Matt's lap, wandered up one of his cuffs, and fell asleep inside the warm darkness of his sleeve.

*

"Mmph," said Matthew in bed later that night, fidgeting himself small in the circle of Techie's arms.

"—and the best bit was Eylah. She made me think of you," Techie said, loosely containing the wriggling bulk of Matt's body.

Aware that a comparison to an ugly, horned, freely-pooping lizard might not seem a compliment, Techie explained. "She was so soft," he said, fingers combing through blond-bright hair, "even though she didn't look soft she was."

"Mmph," agreed Matt, comfortably small at last, but still not quite _set._ He squirmed deeper, until chest and belly were against Techie's belly and groin.

As if bending low over a burrowing little reptile, Techie rounded his shoulders, dropped his chin to the top of Matt's head. "And she wiggled, _too."_

"Humph," sighed Matt, comfortably cuddled at last, after having worked the both of them almost right to the end of the mattress.

"And," Techie said softly, pulling the blanket up until Matt's head was covered completely, "she was sweet." In the warm darkness of his cocoon Matt right then fell sweetly asleep.

Techie continued to comb slow fingers through Mattie's hair, until he joined him.

—  
_I want a star blossom-eating stump lizard. Maybe with a diaper though. P.S. The lizard and what they eat are part of Star Wars canon, but I made up what they look like. Also, I recently held a lizard and thought just what Techie does: She was so sooooft!_


	9. Salt Nettle Jam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Flower Crowns:_
> 
> Stars are born, they fade, things change, and worry doesn't make them change any better. 
> 
> Mattie knows that now. Mattie's _glad_ of that now.

Matt had actually _worried._

He'd thought settling on a green world wouldn't agree with his city boy. That Techie'd get antsy for the spaceports around which he'd grown, or the starship corridors in which they'd met.

That's not what happened.

Matt went still a moment, watched red hair flash three market stalls over as Techie threw back his head and laughed with the new fruit farmer, between trying her jams.

 _All_ her jams.

Matt grinned. His slim little love had a bit of a belly now and Matt was happy to have been gloriously wrong about how Gala would take to their retirement. Then again, at first he'd thought Techie wanted this for _him._

"Fifty-four years old next week Mattie," he'd said year before last, twirling his fingers in locks of Matt's silver-shot blond hair. "We were supposed to do this years ago. You need to give your back a rest."

The accident had been over in seconds, but those seconds had thrown Matt right over a railing, landing him on unforgiving durasteel. Miraculously nothing had broken but his back hadn't been quite right for years.

Well, that was then, this was now.

Now Matt hefted a heavy-laden clothing rack, knowing old Jerrick across the way was probably watching. She'd once said to Matt, kind of breathless, "The racks looks so…heavy. Shouldn't you take the clothes off first?"

Matt had smiled. "This saves time." What he hadn't added was: "Gala was right, I just needed to heal up a bit and now I'm good as new. Strong enough to pick up this whole thing and maybe you besides!"

The old admiral probably would have fainted dead away.

Matt grinned again, pushing the last of the eight racks of hand-altered clothes into the back of their van. They'd sold a lot today. They usually did. Mattie was good at finding interesting second-hand clothes, and Techie was gifted at altering them, removing sleeves, adding collars, trimming in velvets, gems, creating one-of-a-kind pieces holiday makers loved.

"Ready?"

Matt closed the van door, turned to his grinning husband. "Been ready for minutes and minutes, baby."

Techie hummed, came in for what looked like a quick peck…then just stayed there, lip to lip.

Matt hummed back, then licked. Another hum, another lick. "Cocafruit? No…" A third swipe and a sudden childish squeal. "Salt nettle!"

*

It wasn't their anniversary, but for some reason they'd each gone and got the other a gift today anyway.

Snugged in bed, watching a holo series they were _entirely_ too invested in, they ate treebread, smeared thick with the salt nettle jam Techie'd bought for Matt.

Slumped naked, crumbs on his narrow chest, Techie wore the flower crown Matt had bought for him. Sometimes Techie wore it rakish on his head, its pretty purple flowers looking quite nice nestled in his grey-streaked hair.

Sometimes Techie wore it the place Matt liked seeing it best.

On the sweet swell of Techie's jam- and joy-filled belly.

 _—_  
_I needed to jump ahead twenty or so years so that I could peer round a corner and make sure our boys are growing older together, healthy and happy. They are, oh my yes._


	10. Kriffing Damn Pfassking Colonel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Balloons:_
> 
> The colonel stopped right in front of Techie, took hold of his chin and, peering at his whirring eyes as if at a bit of space junk, asked Lieutenant Mitaka, "Huh, you actually use _mecha_ here?"

YOU.

CAN NOT.

BE.

 _KRIFFING_ ANGRY.

WITH.

A.

_BALLOON._

God knew Techie was trying.

Like everyone, Galacian Asha'Techk has bad days. Maybe something broke and resisted fixing. Maybe he's come down with a cold. Maybe Techie's just in a _mood._

Most of those things are easy enough to shake off but. Today. Oh god _to-fucking-day._

Today was a bad day because some Hutt-slime dick of a visiting colonel came strolling straight-backed through his section. Oh she had a stick right up her ass she did and, following long-established protocol, everyone was deferential and polite to the visitor. She did not return the favor.

Colonel Epho critiqued things about which she clearly knew nothing. She picked imaginary lint from uniforms. But for Techie the dam broke when she stopped right in front of him, took hold of his chin and, peering at his whirring eyes, asked Lieutenant Mitaka, "Huh, you actually use _mecha_ here?"

It hadn't occurred to her that Techie was not a machine, or maybe it had, because when Mitaka stutteringly said that Techie was human, the colonel shrugged and moved on.

"That one there baby!"

That was hours ago but Techie was still angry, so right now he was locked in his and Mattie's fresher _trying. to. pop. balloons._

It was Matt's idea because don't even _think_ Gala didn't run _right_ to his sweetheart in a lather, complaining about the _moron_ with the cold _fingers_ who had treated him like _space junk._

With a scowl and a kiss Mattie had said, "You meet me in quarters for lunch okay? I have an idea."

So Techie did and Matt's idea was _perfect._

Because right now they were both in their tiny fresher, which was _full_ of pink _balloons_ bobbing around on the floor, and every last one of them had a stupid whiskered _face_ and stupid pointed _ears_ drawn on, like the colonel, and Mattie was pointing at particularly offensive balloons and Techie was trying to _pop_ them by _stomping_ on them, and boy oh boy you.

Can not.

Be kriffing angry.

With a pfassking balloon.

"That one behind you!"

Because no matter how hard you stamp and jump and twirl _right behind you,_ balloons _squirt_ out from under your bare feet and after awhile something happens.

You just.

Giggle yourself.

_Stupid._

You also end up on the floor panting so hard you're wheezing, while you look up at the most beautiful man in the world and, as he combs your sweaty hair back from your forehead and kisses your bright mechanical eyes, he whispers the sweetest of sweet, sweet nothings to you.

"Hey baby, let's use our _plasma_ torches."

 _—_  
_Today was a bad day, hence a short entry about being angry. Or trying to be. And failing wonderfully. ([Techie's balloons](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/150495609219/fic-30-days-of-techienician-kriffing-damn).)_


	11. Coming In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cooking:_
> 
> "Oh, um."
> 
> Matt took a deep breath, nodded at the wall, stepping to the right, and with a string of mumbled nonsense that even he couldn't make out, he fled.
> 
> Techie stood rooted where he stood and though later this would be funny, right now it was…mortifying.

Matt's fist was raised before he realized what he was doing.

He froze.

Because he and Techie have only been dating for four weeks of lunchtimes, after-shift walks around deck, and sometimes dinner at _Latitude._

Now suddenly he was standing in front of the man's door, ready to knock, and absolutely definitely a hundred percent for sure about to stumble stupidly through some random rush of nonsense.

_"Hey wow hi Techie you look great um I cooked you some black butter bread I got from Ishtari well I mixed the powder with water but I guess that's what you do but that's baking then really isn't it not cooking right um anyway I hear black butter bread's really great and I know you like stuff like this which is why I got it would you share it with me did I say you look really lovely?"_

Right. No. There was no way Matt was going to knock on Techie's door and besides he couldn't because he hadn't even said he was coming over and so it would be rude and Matt didn't want to be the way other people had been to Techie he wanted to be courtly he wanted to be sweet and—

—before Matt realized he was stumbling stupidly through a random rush of nonsense, three officers came toward him down the corridor. Reflexively Matt rapped on Techie's door.

He froze.

The officer's passed.

Time passed.

And just when Matt thought the danger had too, Techie opened the door.

Matt's fist was still raised. He forgot to lower it, to blink, or even to stumble stupidly over nonsense.

Because Techie looked kriffing _beautiful._

Pale as always but for a perfect pink blush across his cheeks, hair a mussed red halo round his head, his bright blue eyes so sleepy-soft and…

…he was bare-chested.

Matt remembered to blink so that he could do so at Techie's tiny, perfectly peaked little nipples.

Matt remembered to lower his hand so he could more easily fight the urge to touch them.

Finally Matt remembered his stumble of stupid nonsense.

"Bread."

Well, some of it.

Sighing a smile Techie stepped back from his door. Matt stepped inside and it was one second, two seconds, three…and then the scent rolled over him, a soft tide.

Techie smelled like come.

Wait, no. Did come have a smell? It didn't, did it? But…when someone wants, when someone's _had?_ Wasn't this the scent of that?

Matt's knees felt funny. He needed to sit down. No. He couldn't sit down. If he sat down he wouldn't get up again. Ever. So he better stand up. And also—

"Bread!"

Matt held out the small round, still-hot, precious bit of deliciousness he'd cooked-baked-stirred up for Techie because Techie loved bread-and-butter and warm things that were comforting and what would be better than bread _with_ the butter already in it and so he handed it to Techie and said, "Black butter," and promptly said nothing else.

With a slow smile Techie reached, hands cupping under Matt's briefly as he took the little loaf of bread and Matt was pretty sure he was going to suggest they share it but it was then that the light caught the spotty flush down Techie's neck and chest, and yes absolutely yes, now Matt knew the messy hair and hard nipples and dreamy eyes were exactly what his body had told him they were.

Techie had been masturbating.

Oh god he really needed to sit down. Instead Matt opened his mouth, with no idea what was going to come out of it.

"I'm…going…now."

His gaze flickered down to Techie's chest and it was then that Galacian Asha'Techk realized he was half naked. He put his hand over his heart, the barest covering, but instead of looking embarrassed he smiled wider.

That smile was soft as his skin looked, as his eyes were, as his voice when he said, "Thank you, Mattie."

Oh shit, shit, shit.

_Mattie._

Techie's eyes darted toward his own bed, reflex, it was reflex, damning reflex and now he looked awkward, now the delicate blush on cheeks turned into something red and hectic and mortified.

_Mattie._

It's what he calls Matt in his own head. It's what he calls him when he's alone. It's what he whispers when he's on his back in bed and opening his legs wide, imagining Matt between them. It's what he says and says, soft, soft, soft as he strokes and groans and comes.

_Mattie. Mattie. Mattie._

Oh god.

So.

Well.

Nothing happened for awhile.

Because whose turn was it? Who was supposed to move and make this mess something other than awkward? Who was—

"Okay!"

Techie shook his head and said it again, only not so loudly. "Okay, um, thank you Matt. For the bread. Maybe you can. Come back. Later? We can."

Techie gestured with the dark little circle of bread and nodded as if answering his own question, so Matt nodded too and turned around to reach for the door but the door had somehow moved to the right so he was palming the wall.

"Um."

Then he was taking a deep breath and nodding at the wall, stepping to the right, and with a string of mumbled nonsense that even he couldn't make out, Matt was gone.

Afterward Techie stood rooted where he was for a ship's year. That's what he'd tell Matt later, weeks from now when this was funny instead of mortifying. He stood there and stood there and the hot bread went warm and his hot blush went cool, and Techie couldn't think past feeling, so he just _felt._

Happy. The bread. Matt made him bread. Matt had given him his now-favorite bread in the entire galaxy.

Stupid. He'd answered the door half-naked ten seconds after wiping come off his belly. He probably looked like a sweaty, cross-eyed idiot.

Wistful. Matt's hand had been so warm with the bread cupped in it. If he were a more courageous man Techie figured he'd have set the fine bread aside, then set Matt's big, warm, sweet, still, gentle hand on his own wanting body.

Techie stepped up to his door, placed his palm right where Matt's had been. He didn't care that the door opened or that three officers strode past and they saw him with his jeans low-slung on his hips and his eyes somewhere else.

Because Techie was busy feeling one last thing.

Hopeful.

Techie held the bread up to his nose. It smelled of sweet butter and dark wheat, it smelled of comfort and stillness and gentleness. It smelled, it did, it smelled of one thing.

"Mattie."

_—  
This is the first in what will be four parts, with the resolution being their first kiss. _


	12. Dream a Little Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _AU:_
> 
> They have watched one another for weeks Techie and Matt, shared smiles and shy hellos and blushes that can be seen from a dozen feet away. That's been enough somehow, more than enough.
> 
> Until now.

"Gala, you look beautiful."

That's how he should have begun. Just those few words, spoken softly. An irrevocable truth.

Matthew Kee sat in shadows along the mess hall's far wall. It was late, few people were about to see him, slumped morose over a salt nettle muffin that he was picking apart rather than eating.

Beautiful was not how Matt _had_ begun however, no. He didn't even remember what he'd said not ten minutes previous, just that he'd made a lot of mouth noises, endless ums and ahs as he'd stood just inside Techie's door, looking everywhere but at Techie's bare chest and long arms and pale neck and—

Matt mashed more muffin and made a mouth noise. This one was a grunt of frustration. Or desire. And. Definitely and. It was frustration _and_ desire.

The desire was obvious. The humid scent that had been in that room, the flush down Techie's body, his slow-blink eyes and soft voice and—

 _Frustration_ because Matt had let his own self-doubts hijack what he'd meant to do and what he'd meant was be _sweet._

Techie was always sweet because he was always _present._ He'd look at Matt and he'd see all of him with his wonderful blue mech eyes. But Matt? He'd just walked into that room and gone stupid, _not_ sweet. And then he'd run off.

Matt slid lower and oh if he could do it again he'd do something, anything, everything differently.

_Matt closed his eyes…_

"Gala, you look beautiful."

Techie smiles at him in this better version of events, smiles wide and that makes him even more beautiful. There's no limit on that is there? On how beautiful a man can be, his hair so orange, eyes so blue, skin fine as milk?

"I was in the Mazon markets last week, after picking up stuff I needed for work, and they had all these kinds of bread. I know you love bread so I just…I made this for you Gala."

In this pretty daydream the still-warm bread is held between them, then with a sigh Techie cups his hands under Matt's and goes on tip-toe. He doesn't have to, no, but it makes him much taller because Matt's crouching low, he does that sometimes, because he's so kriffing big and now Techie is and oh his mouth is the sweetest sort of soft, it's salty from sweat, too, and it's _hungry._

It's a delicate hunger, full of peckish nibbles at Matt's lips, full of a tongue wriggling inside him to taste.

Taste _inside_ him. Inside him.

Matt moans against Techie's mouth and gathers him close with one arm, mashing both the bread and Techie's hands between them and—

_Oh for kriff sake!_

Matt sat up straight in his chair, opened wide eyes, gaze darting around the mess hall. God damn it, even in his _imagination_ he goes wrong.

Matt frowned his eyes closed again, willed his daydream self to uncrush the bread, to carefully, softly, _sweetly_ whisper—

"You are so beautiful."

_No!_

Matt opened his eyes again and if he sat any straighter in this kriffing chair he'd be bent over backward.

A man shouldn't keep telling another man he was beautiful. Because what happens then is easy enough to predict. Then Techie would wonder _would Matt even like me if I weren't beautiful?_

Matt scowled at the mashed mess of his muffin, slumped forward until his head banged on the table.

He grumbled himself resigned and then, with a kind of kindness, time decided to go taffy long and fleek oil slow, and gently-gently Matthew Kee fell asleep and started to dream.

_"Because I love you."_

They have watched one another for weeks Techie and Matt, shared smiles and shy hellos and blushes that can be seen from a dozen feet away. That's been enough somehow, more than enough to make what followed, four weeks of dinners and walks and holding hands, more than enough to make four weeks feel like four _years,_ to make it all right to bring a man black butter bread, to place it carefully on the foot of his narrow bed, to tell him that you bring it—

"Because I love you Techie. If that's okay?"

A tip-toe reach of arms around his neck, the ticklish press of a kiss under his ear, these answer _yes._

The soft brush of red hair against his cheek and jaw and the fingers of both hands, these answer _yes._

"Yes, Mattie, yes, yes, yes."

But those, oh those are the finest yes of all because those are _words,_ bright as orange, clear as blue, they're the yes that beats Matt's heart to double time, floods his body so full of relief he goes _hard_ with it.

"Yes," Techie whispers, pushing his hips against Matt's, a slow thrust-and-away-and-thrust.

"Yes," Techie says and now his legs are wrapped around Matt's waist and the yes is more a moan now, one sigh and then another, it's oh god it's _relief_ because Techie's coming, he's _coming_ as he says it and Matt holds him and kisses his neck and they chant _yes_ to each other's skin and hearts and…

…Matthew Kee woke up, sat bolt upright. Gaze skittering first around the growing-busy mess hall and then down to the table.

Matt's comm was beeping.

 _—_  
_This is part two of what will be four parts, finishing with the comfort prompt, because of course this will end in comfort. In case it was a bit vague, the AU element here was Matt imagining himself much cooler than he was with Techie in the previous chapter. And then there was the matter of that sweet little dream…_


	13. Brightbird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Animals:_
> 
> Mitaka was one corridor beyond Galacian Asha'Techk's doorway before he realized what he'd seen: Two men who had had a misunderstanding, maybe a quarrel. 
> 
> Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka excused himself from his colleagues. 
> 
> He turned around. Went back the way he'd come. 
> 
> To Techie's quarters.

Galacian Asha-Techk paced his small quarters like an animal. Back and forth, back and forth, a krak'jya caught in a corner.

He'd seen one of those sharp-faced things on a news-vid once. Like that agitated creature Techie paced round and round his tiny space, growling low.

When this didn't do a damn thing for his frustration, Gala stepped up onto his narrow bed and then—thump-thump, bare heels loud on the steel floor—jumped down again on the other side.

Over and over he did this, back and forth, up and down, until his legs shook. When he realized he, like that high-strung krak'jya, was pulling at his hair, Techie sank to the floor, head in hands. Because that fledgling hope he'd had before? Well that fucker had faded fast when he realized exactly how _stupid_ he'd been.

Gods, he'd stood in front of Matt like some half-naked _lump._ Splotchy, sweaty—Techie lifted an arm, ducked his head—and pfassking _fuck,_ as whiff as a god damned _herd_ of krak'jyas.

Matt had been sweet though, he was _always_ sweet. He gave Techie little gifts all the time, tools, muffins, gelmeats, and instead of saying anything about how bad Techie looked, he'd given him warm, perfect _bread._

Then, when Techie finally opened his mouth to say thank you, what came out? A diminutive, a nickname, an _endearment_ for kriff's sake.

_Mattie._

Techie grunted in memory, looked at his bare belly where not twenty minutes ago he'd run fingers through his own come, humming, "Mattie, Mattie," as his body shuddered with aftershocks.

Techie bolted to his feet.

He went back and forth and up and down.

Back and forth, up and down.

Back and forth.

*

Walking in section twelve with Lieutenants Shiph and Velorr'n after shift, Dopheld Mitaka did not turn and look at the red-haired man. That didn't mean Mitaka did not _see._

Because the lieutenant definitely saw the half-naked tech standing in his own doorway. Saw the man's hopeful, faraway gaze, even saw the moment it flickered to regret.

Mitaka also saw the big blond man a few dozen meters along the curve of the corridor, standing alone and still, stalled like a starship without fuel.

Dopheld knew both men, sort of. He'd chatted with Matthew Kee that time he had worked on the sensor towers, but it was Techie with whom he'd spoken most, especially during the half-week it took to upgrade the displays in command.

That's when Mitaka learned that Techie wasn't as quiet as he seemed. Once there was something to talk about, the man talked. Listened, too. Mitaka had liked that. Had liked _him._ Something the young lieutenant realized only after Matthew Kee came along.

Dopheld was one corridor beyond Galacian Asha'Techk's doorway before his brain caught up with what he'd seen: two wistful men. He was a second corridor along when he realized what that probably meant: a misunderstanding, maybe a quarrel.

Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka excused himself from his colleagues.

He turned around. Went back the way he'd come.

To Techie's quarters.

*

Gala owns a lot of weird little things. He's a weird little thing collector.

Small tools, wispy scarves, glittery jewelry. Mostly jewelry because, like a Corellian brightbird, Techie loves bits of flash and dazzle. So he's got hair clips and bracelets and pins, small stuff he can tuck into a pocket and fiddle with during the work day, then pull out and wear after.

He's never really cared if anyone likes his little collection, but he'd be a liar if he didn't wish someone would.

Techie stopped in the middle of the mess hall and looked at…someone's back. His low-bent head. Nervously Techie danced fingers over his hair and the half dozen gems he's put in it. He'd smoothed and primped not ten minutes previous but between then and now he knew he'd done what he always does: twisted, stroked, poked. Even without looking he knew that, instead of a pretty brightbird, he now probably looked like an ill-tempered sand monkey, hair poking out every which way.

 _Pfassk!_ He pressed at his fucking hair with both hands. He wasn't used to _this!_

To _liking._ To being _liked._ He wasn't used to those things happening at the same time. He wasn't used to pressing a blush from his face, thinking he'd put on too much scent, wondering if he should just ignore Dopheld's advice, ignore it right now. Go back to quarters. Back.

Techie took a step back.

One step.

One.

And right then and for no reason whatsoever, Gala's bright blue eyes click-whirred and he saw suddenly sharper, better, crystal clear.

Not the man in front of him, no no no. Techie at last saw himself.

See, the thing is, Galacian has always thought he was calm. He didn't want much, not really. And not wanting was good. Not wanting was easier.

Except it was a lie.

The truth was this: Techie won't let himself want. If he doesn't want, he won't hurt.

Another lie.

Because Techie wants Mattie.

"Matt, Matt, _Matt,"_ he hissed, twist-pulling his hair in frustration. "His name is _Matt."_

Techie wants him so much it hurts.

Standing there in the middle of a mess hall that was too noisy and dead silent, busy and somehow empty, Techie looked at Matthew Kee's broad back, at his bowed head, and he felt the ghost of Matt's hand in his. Because they do that now, they hold hands, they walk and walk round ship's corridors and down stairwells—Matt rumbles and Techie hoots until their voices echo _up._

They roam through late night landing bays and down belowdeck and maybe they do all that because that's when they hold each other's hands, that's when it happens naturally and they both seem to know what to do then, walking and talking low, but it's gone beyond that now, hasn't it?

For Techie it's gone to endearments panted out on humid breaths as he strokes himself. It's gone to blushing alone in his quarters after their walks, because he's got his fingers in his mouth _sucking_ away any bit of Mattie that might be on his skin. It's gone to holding black butter bread against his belly until it's not warm any more. It's gone to—

Techie's comm went off.

He looked down.

A dozen feet distant Matthew Kee's head flew up. He turned.

"Oh."

—  
_Part four of four coming this week. Also, pacing like a krak'jya, primping like a brightbird, looking like a sand monkey—Techie's meant to be the animal here.[And here's our baby's messy, bejeweled hair](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/151290345134/fic-30-days-of-techienician-brightbird-animals). (Mitaka's crush, by the way, was due to a mistype, then as soon as I wrote it I thought: Well yes, of course he'd crush on Techie, of course he would. And now I feel sorry for him.)_


	14. The Comforts of Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Comfort:_
> 
> "I love ash-rabbits and Naboo saber-and-sorcery epics," Techie said, coming close enough to hear Matt's breathing. 
> 
> "And puff cakes. I really love puff cakes. I once had so many I puked into my own shirt. I was eight. It was disgusting."

Techie has been loved before.

For a certain value of love.

The summer he was thirteen, before what happened to his eyes happened, a neighbor-girl started leaving fireflowers outside his door, then love poems. He thought maybe he could like her back—he didn't really know how to do that, it seemed like you had to _decide_ to do it—then he noticed Hellan's poems were all about flames and fire and his hair.

Still, he was only thirteen so he thought maybe that was how things went, maybe a girl told a boy what she liked best about him even if she liked other things, too.

He'd have believed that and worked hard on trying to like her back if his mam hadn't said she wanted to see his "pretty green eyes again." So Techie went for a haircut and he let them sheer his long hair short in deference to the heat.

One day, two, after the third day went by without flowers or a poem, Gala knew Hellan hadn't liked other things.

The winter Techie was twenty he met a man and that man said he was in love with him. He would come nearly every night to the spaceport bar where Techie worked, and he'd tell him how pretty he was, how rare. "Your eyes," he'd sigh, staring so long that Techie couldn't help fidgeting his mech pupils wide-then-narrow, wide-then-narrow.

One night Techie told the man he was going to save up for some real eyes, that he was kind of allergic to the mechs and they sometimes hurt him.

"Oh angel, it hurts to be beautiful," the man had whispered, as if sharing some sort of fucking truth. "Keep them darling, keep being _beautiful."_

Techie had laughed out loud, a barking cackle, before he realized the man was serious, absolutely fucking serious. They avoided one another after that.

There were others, men and women who loved the paleness of Gala's body, or the quietness of his mouth, they wanted him to be things he was not, or crave things he didn't need.

So yes, Techie's been loved before.

For a certain value of love.

Which is to say Techie's never been loved for real, he's never looked at a man and seen that man look _past_ him somehow.

Like Matthew Kee was doing now.

Standing there in the middle of a noisy mess hall Matt was looking right past the things about Techie that didn't matter—his bright eyes, soft body, pretty hair that'll probably go grey early like his mam's—and instead Matt looked at…Techie.

And what Techie saw Matt see made him angry.

Because Matt's gaze was awkward, uncomfortable. He looked like Techie does all the time, as if he wasn't sure what part of him might be wrong this time, or which bit had been turned into a fetish. Matthew looked as if he was not quite sure Techie _saw_ him.

Well here's a thing about Galacian Asha'Techk: He was blind once, after the virus took his eyes, and there is nothing quite like being blind awhile to help a man see.

"I love ash-rabbits and Naboo saber-and-sorcery epics," Techie said, coming close enough to hear Matt's breathing. "And puff cakes. I really love puff cakes. I once had so many I puked into my own shirt. I was eight. It was disgusting."

Anyone can love a man's hair or his height. For a certain value of love.

The love that matters, though, loves when red hair's gone grey, it loves a hand that's shaking, it loves a love of puff cakes so grand it's disgusting.

"Well," said Matt, breathing deep. "An ash-rabbit bit my toe when I was small and since then they've scared the hell out of me. Don't be mad but I have a lucky rabbit's foot in my pocket right this second."

They're going to end up doing this their whole long lives together, this confession thing. Along with kisses and tears and sex, along with burdens shared and hopes realized, Matt and Techie will give each other their beginnings, their strangeness, the endless bits that have made them more than what people see.

So they sat down there in the mess hall, side by side, close but not very, and for the first time but not the last, they shared the comforts of confession.

"—flew it right into a derelict shipyard."

"Oh no!"

"I never flew anything again after that."

"—so much swamp water that the machine actually blew up."

"Fuck!"

"They fired me while it was still burning."

"—pink. Really pink. My mam said it looked good on me."

"I wish I'd seen that."

"Well…some day?"

"—naked, totally naked. But no one said a thing!"

"I wish I'd seen that."

Giggling. "Well…some day?"

And so it went and maybe they were working toward it all along but in truth it surprised them the moment one said, "—the first _Star Rise_ holo—" and the other shouted, "I loved those!"

Actually, that wasn't what surprised them. It was what came after. Well after the after. Because first they talked for ten straight minutes about queens on red sea voyages, pirates bedeviled by sorcerous jewels, about the western reaches and star beasts, and it was after that, after going breathless with childhood dreams that they both stopped talking at the same time. Then bridged the gap between them.

Not every man's lucky enough to remember the first time he kisses his one true love, but Matthew Kee knew right then he would be one of the fortune few.

His memories of these moments will change a bit over the years, but what he'll remember most will be the truth and that was this:

Five seconds felt like fifty. His body felt like fire. Techie felt like a planet beside him, a gravity so huge Matt was sure he was falling.

Though his eyes were closed Matt knew Techie wanted to touch him, knew he was busy-busy wriggling himself still, noisy-noisy grunting himself calm.

Matt would remember that that kiss was a feast, it filled him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He'd remember that when someone nearby whistled at them and someone else said something about tongues, he and Techie turned away from each other, smiling.

Then suddenly Matt was shy and awkward again because he gets that way, unsure what to do with hands the size of plates and a grin that seems to split his face. So he pushed at his glasses and made his hands into fists and he knew what he was doing but it was so damned hard not to do it and then Techie fixed it. He fixed everything.

"I have to go to work now," he said, so close Matt felt ticklish puffs against his ear. "Can I show you something pretty? Tomorrow? Please?"

Matt nodded and wanted to ask what, but didn't. He finally found his tongue when Techie stood, said, "Bye Matt."

"Mattie," Matt said. "Call me Mattie."

Techie pressed at the blush in his cheek. He wanted to say something but he didn't. His mouth shaped the word though, one time, then two.

Mattie. _Mattie._

_—_  
_So ends the little run of four chapters. Much thanks to Winklepicker—Admiral of Evil Enticements—who helped me figure out this chapter after spamming me with a glorious abundance of Domhnall Gleeson screencaps. Thank you Admiral. *salutes* P.S. What Techie wants to show Matt is covered in chapter two of the 30 Days of Techienician:[The Seeds of Love](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7930627/chapters/18148129)._


	15. Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Fall:_
> 
> Matthew Kee knows for sure that love feels nothing like falling.
> 
> It's the opposite.

Falling in love is nothing like falling. Matthew Kee knows that for sure.

When he was two-years-old Matt was already well over a meter tall and a freakish sixteen kilos. When baby Matt fell down, he fell _hard._

His entire childhood was littered with scabs and bruises, because even once he learned to walk just fine, that still left climbing, running, and a dozen other things that put Matt's big body at the mercy of gravity.

So no, nope, he knows for sure that love feels nothing like falling. It's the opposite.

With Gala love is… _up._

It's standing on an old pier and looking at four moons in an alien sky because Techie knows all their names and Matt is making him giggle, trying to guess which one is which.

It's spying Techie high on the mezzanine over level four and he's up there blowing kisses down to Matt first with one hand and then the other.

It's being on his knees in the observation deck below the ship, the one that's always empty because it's always cold, and looking up as Gala thrashes above him and moans.

Even when it's not perfect, love is _up._

Like when he forgets he's not alone any more but selfishly _acts_ like it? Well then Matt gazes up through lashes to doe-eye his way to Techie's forgiveness.

Other times it's remembering too well what alone feels like and panicking when he wakes to an empty bed, only to look up and see his sleepless sweetheart twirling a strand of hair round his finger as he paces their quarters and reads.

Yes, falling in love with Gala has never meant the kind that leaves bruises, this falling is the opposite of gravity.

With this falling, Matthew Kee flies.

—  
 _Can anyone see the prompt of 'fall' and not think of love? Well, I couldn't. Neither could Mattie. P.S. I'm halfway through these prompts, woot!_


	16. Draw Near

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hidden Talent:_
> 
> Gala didn't used to think of himself as a man of many talents, not beyond the technical at any rate, but since Mattie, since this, since them, Gala knows he does one thing better than all other things.

Matt is not by nature a quarrelsome man.

It's expected of him, often encouraged, people _egg him on_ to be aggressive, but Matthew Kee is _not._

Sure, his resting face is kind of a frown, and yes he's just shy of six four, and it's true half his shirts barely fit across his shoulders, sure, sure, sure Matt's big, he's serious, but he's, he's _not_ —

Matt took a deep breath to calm himself down. He closed his eyes. Loosed his hands.

Because _that_ is who Matt is, okay? He's placid. He's happy being slow. Being steady. Being _calm_ for kriff's sake.

So why, oh why do people want him to be angry, why do they goad him or, worse, why do they try to recruit him to their petty arguments, demand he take sides, stand behind _their_ causes, hate who they hate?

He's so sick of it, he really is, and sometimes he just wants to hide away, maybe work in that hospital colony he's heard about on Botor. Nearly everyone's blind there, no one would see what he looks like, he could help keep their tech going you know? He could talk soft and no one would have to _know._

Except.

Except a lot of things.

Matt loves it in space, for one. He loves the feeling that he's Out There. When they're coming up on a planet he's never seen before he's always one of the first at the view ports, mumbling to anyone nearby all the things he's learned: atmosphere, gravity, native species, tech level. Sometimes he knows some history—where the people below stood in the last war; whether the fight ever made landfall there—and he loves that some of the crew listen to him, some come over now and ask questions.

Matt _loves_ that, he does, and he's not going to give it up because today some xeno fool in a public fresher wanted to start something with a Kollif. "It's not even got proper arms," the old tech whispered to Matt, darning his chin at the little snub-limbed sentient, shouldering Matt as if he was a dog, set to sic after anything that made the old guy feel angry-small-uncomfortable. Matt wondered how the idiot had managed to hide his prejudices for so long.

Didn't matter. What mattered was walking away. And what matters was, that of things Matt loves, being radar technician is one of them. It's not the most glamorous job but it's a necessary job, a good one and, when people just leave him alone, he's good _at_ it.

If Matt fixes a thing for you, it is _fixed._ Like how human bones heal, the place of mending actually becoming stronger than the parts that never broke? Right, well that's Matt's fixes, he's that good and he knows it and he's not giving that up when some new technician thinks he looks tease-worthy dumb, or a cranky supervisor says he moves too slow even though he's got all his work done on time.

None of that counts for much though, not compared to what Matt loves most, more than being in space and more than being a radar tech. That what is a who and it's Galacian Asha'Techk. It's because of space and because of being an engineer that Matt even met Techie, but if he had to give those up _for_ him? Oh it's no contest, not now, not ever.

"Take off your shirt Mattie."

"Oh." Matt shook the ruminations out of his head; he hadn't even heard Techie come in.

Techie didn't repeat himself, just tossed his backpack into a corner, shed shoes, socks, and his own pants, grabbed a felted pen and sat cross-legged at the top of the bed.

Techie can't protect Matt from idiots, assumptions, or black moods, moods so thunderhead clear all he has to do is walk in to their rooms and see Matt head-down morose to know the day was a bad one.

What Techie has just now decided he _can_ do is draw Matthew Kee some comfort.

"Over here please."

Gala got the idea from Matt actually, from what he does sometimes after they make love. If he's not sleepy, if they have time, Matt will roam a finger over Gala's sweaty belly, fancy he's scribing protective sigils there, composing love poems.

Other times, in those deep-breathing moments after he's ridden Techie for as long as they can stand, he draws big fingers through his own come spattered on Gala's belly. Sometimes Matt croons indecent endearments as he sucks sweet little bruises into the softness of his love's stomach.

"Come on."

So you can see from where Techie got the desire to mark his man with symbols, warding devices, protection.

"Come _on,"_ Techie grumped, thunderheads gathering between his own bright brows, because Mattie hadn't even stood _up_ yet.

Matt's still at the place where saying no makes him feel a bit stupid, as if he should get it up for Techie no matter what. So he mumbled at one of his knees, "I'm sorry, I don't…you know…"

Techie squinted at Matt, peering at him, _through_ him. Then Gala grousingly stripped off his t-shirt, looked down and on the smooth expanse of his belly scrawled a crooked sign:

 _NO TOUCHING_  
_THIS MEANS_  
_YOU MATTIE_

Maybe Matt _is_ slow because he didn't get it. And maybe Techie had had his own brand of shitty day but however much he wanted to sigh and slump and feel put-upon Techie didn't.

Well, he sighed, but it was to say, "It's not about _sex_ Matt," while patting his inked-up belly.

Matt still didn't get it but fine, whatever, it would be easier to just shut up and he'd had practice at that all day so he stripped off shirt and shoes, and went to sit on the bed but Techie pressed a shoulder until Matt took the hint and laid down.

Then Galacian Asha'Techk placed talismans on Matthew Kee.

With studious, tongue-poking care he drew a five-petaled damsel flower around Matt's belly button. A long and studied pause and Techie added a wine-bee, then drew it a companion.

"This is for tomorrow," he said, patting Matt's tummy. "If anyone says anything to you, look at this and remember that they don't matter. Just you matter and I matter. Us. You and me."

That was when Matt did a thing.

He'd laid still while Techie drew with the soft pen, but once given permission to look, he leaned up on elbows and—

"Techie you can draw! It's so pretty! Look at it! It's so sweet!"

Of course Matt touched, big, careful fingers dancing over the flower and then even more delicately—as if their glassine wings were real—over the wine-bees. And of course he named them—"Gala Junior and Little Matt!"—and he kept raving with such tickled abandon that of _course_ there had to be more.

Giddy, Techie went to work adding funnel flowers higher up Matthew's belly, down his ticklish wide waist Gala drew a blizzard of dalsa vines and flower thorns, and by the time he was drawing dewy gigglebuds around Matt's nipples, Techie was laughing so hard he was honking which was _killing_ Matt the best kind of dead.

Gala didn't used to think of himself as a man of many talents, not beyond the technical at any rate, but since Mattie, since this, since _them,_ Gala knows he does one thing better than all other things.

Matt grabbed Techie round the waist and hauled him on top, his laughter buzzing through Techie's chest, a second-hand joy.

He _loves_ Matt. Loves him so well that he makes him happy.

There's no other talent, _none_ he wants more than that.

—  
_You know, I thought Techie's hidden talent was going to be his ability to draw but Techie had another idea. His was much better. P.S. Gigglebuds are really a thing in the Star Wars universe. That makes me happy._


	17. Kiss and Makeup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Makeup:_
> 
> Mitaka slid to the edge of his chair, so close he could feel Techie's breath on his face. Then, with a nod, Doph swiped his index finger through a pot of creamy red-brown, brought it to Techie's mouth. The moment his finger touched, Techie closed his eyes. The moment Techie's mouth opened, so did Doph's. 
> 
> Matthew Kee grunted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [Winklepicker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Winklepicker/pseuds/Winklepicker) and [A Secret Scribbler](http://archiveofourown.org/users/a_secret_scribbler)

Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka pursed his lips as if to kiss.

Techie did the same.

"No," Doph murmured, "not quite."

He scooted his chair closer, placed a careful hand under Techie's bearded chin, turned him.

"Yes," he said, "like that."

The small light on Mitaka desk shone on Gala's face just so. It made his three-day beard flash bright, set off the plumpness of dusky lips.

Perfect.

Mitaka slid to the edge of his chair, so close he could feel Techie's breath on his face. Then, with a nod, Doph swiped his index finger through a pot of creamy red-brown, brought it to Techie's mouth. The moment his finger touched, Techie closed his eyes. The moment Techie's mouth opened, so did Doph's.

Matt grunted.

Matthew Kee covered the noise by doing it four times, so it sounded like…coughing? Yes. He'd go for coughing. So he coughed. It sounded mostly real.

Techie's gaze slid toward Mattie, sitting so close their knees touched. Undistracted, Doph kept spreading color over Techie's lips until his natural pink was dark. Just a little. Just enough. Chasing a rogue smudge of stain with his thumb, Mitaka's tongue ran over his own lips, so did Techie's.

Matt grunted.

He covered up this noise by swiping a finger under his nose as if battling a fit of sudden congestion. There may have been a bit of coughing to round things out.

Techie's brows went up in the middle in that way he has, the one that's worried, amused, or confused, depending.

Having successfully run the uncooperative lip stain to ground, Dopheld lifted Techie's chin again and pursed his lips as if to kiss.

In reflex Techie did the same.

Matt grunted.

Techie and Doph both turned to look at him this time and Matt proceeded to inhale so sharply he had an actual coughing fit, honest and true.

After taking himself right to the edge of quite nearly dead, Matt figuratively stepped back, took a deep breath, and muttered _sorry_ to his hands.

"What for?"

It was Dopheld asking but it might as well have been Techie for all the softness of voice and the _listening_ of ears.

Matt had no intention of answering because he didn't _have_ an answer, then Matt made the mistake of looking up. His mouth took the reins from his brain.

"Because you're both just so beautiful."

Matt might have avoided the precipice of quite nearly dead a couple seconds ago but he was certainly going to die of mortification now, except…

…Techie smiled, took Matt's hand, and turned back to Dopheld. "Now show me how to do my eyes like yours at Cenn's anniversary please?"

*

Techie's timing sucks sometimes.

Because sometimes Mattie's _sucking._

Humming, sliding his bare ass further down their bed, dropping his knees to open his legs wide wide _wide_ and right in the act of baring his sweet, pale neck for more gentle bites Techie asked again. "Why Mattie?" _Why were you sorry, mortified, afraid?_

This time Matt stopped lipping and sucking and _wanting_ , rested their foreheads together. As if to his hands he mumbled, "—I don't know. I thought…"

Matt had had a whole lot of thoughts tonight.

In Dopheld's quarters he'd thought _oh god oh god_ as soon as Techie and Mitaka had sat close and he saw that, off duty and smiling, Mitaka was _pretty._

And then Mitaka had touched Gala to look at his bare face and Matt had sat down heavy, wondering if Doph would-could-should _kiss_ Techie and where had _that_ come from?

Techie had chattered fast after that, talked about a party where Mitaka's eyes had been made up smoky-soft, his mouth sweet and dark (Techie's words), and then there'd come all the _touching,_ with Doph running his hand over Gala's three-day _I don't feel like shaving_ ginger bristles.

"I thought…"

Then they'd sat so close, Mitaka's legs straddling Techie's, and there was more touching, reflexive mirroring of each other with mouths and grins, there'd been soft words murmured between them and while Matt could hear everything, sat not two feet away, he hadn't heard talk of makeup, he'd heard… _sex noises._

"—thought I'd be jealous?

Matt raised his head so suddenly Techie _oophed_ as their bellies pressed hard against each other.

Every man or woman Matt's ever loved had wanted to claim him or be claimed. It always seemed expected. "I didn't want you to think that I…Dopheld…"

Gala took hold of Matt's chin, held his gaze, grey smoke still shadowing his eyes, making them deep and so very blue.

"Mattie, you're mine because you say you are. If you want to be someone else's then _that's_ what you are."

Matt nodded because it was a good answer, it was, but it was a bad answer, too. Matt figured that wasn't a nice thing to say though, so he stayed silent.

Which wasn't a nice thing to _do._

"Don't you dare."

Techie held Matt's chin cranky-tight. "Talk to me Mattie. Do you want me to say no one else can have you, or that I want you to want only me? Do you want me to be possessive of you, or hate Dopheld? Do you want me to—"

"No!" Sometimes a bunch of wrong words can help someone find the right ones. "No, I don't want you to be jealous, that feels awful and I hate it, I just…"

Maybe the flutter will fade, Matt expects that it will, the fluttery feeling when he's meeting someone for the first time, Techie's hand in his, and he gets to say, "This is Galacian, my boyfriend." _My baby sweetheart lover angel one true love._

It's been eight months and still Matt's belly goes flopping around his guts like the most ungainly butterfly because— "You're both so pretty and fine and I want to be so important to you that you always want to stay. I want to be so important to you that you never want me to leave."

Techie octopussed around Matt, arms and legs pulling him close so he could whisper in his hair, "My da taught me something before he died. I don't even know why he was telling me and I was maybe only ten but Mattie, he said that love? Do you know what loving someone _is?_ It's when that person's happiness is important to your own."

Gala rubbed his scruffy beard against Mattie's neck, pressed his mouth to a fine, big ear. "If you wanted to go, if you wanted Doph or someone else I'd want you to be happy. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be sad if you left or that I want you to go. I don't, not ever. I've been waiting for you my whole life Mattie. My whole _life."_

Matt cries quiet. Sometimes.

So Matt cried against Gala's throat. For awhile. He's a big man, there's lots of room for tears.

His ginger octopus held tight. Hummed. Sometimes. After awhile the humming turned into wispy-shy endearments. _Angel, baby, love._

When all of that turned into something more they aren't sure. There was no movement _from_ and toward _to,_ there was more a weepy breath that changed to a sighing breath that become a breath swallowed by a lipstick-smeared mouth that turned into soft warm sounds huffed between them and after a dreamy while that became Techie straddled over Mattie and stroking himself while his pretty bare ass rubbed against Matt's cock.

That too went on awhile and when, at last, he was about to come Techie groped for Matt's wrists, tugged and—

—came warm and wet into two big, cupped palms.

 _Yes,_ Matt thought, _yes,_ and possibly he was about to do something humid and breathless but Techie got there first.

Clamping both hands round Mattie's wrists Gala bent low, then delicately licked his own come from Matt's warm hands. Then Techie came close and _fed_ him.

Matt is sometimes slow to catch fire but catch he did, octopussing now, a giant clutching at narrow, strong shoulders, wrapping round a slim, sturdy waist. He humped up into Gala's belly, thrashed as if he would come out of his _skin_ instead of just come.

"No," he panted, "no, no, no," sucking Techie's lip, his neck, his short beard and long hair. It was _no don't go_ and _no I won't leave ever_ and it was _no_ to long-ago pain and fear and days of unfulfilled want. It was _no_ to remembering a time before Galacian Asha'Techk and finally, when Techie took hold of his cock, it was _no don't stop no Gala no Gala yesyesyes._

Matt held so tight as he came that Techie sipped little breaths, exhaled tiny pants, counted the flutter-flight of Matt's heart beats and failed to give number to the tremors in his big limbs. Thoughts flew fleet through Techie's head, how he'd be fine with dying right here and now, wanted and wanting, sated and satiating, and oh stars above in love and _loved._

Instead he squealed "Ooouch!" his own strength shooting through adrenaline quick, wriggling from Matt's shaky grasp and laughing, "You bit me!"

Mattie started to apologize but his contrition was drown by a tidal wave of giggles and an accusation. "You have lipstick on your nose!"

For the next ten minutes they hunted for smeared Merakai Maroon, finding it on teeth and cock, bellies and necks, and oh especially each other's laughing mouths, from which they took and gave kiss upon kiss until there was a knock on the door and belated realization as Mitaka called out, "Are you two ready?"

In the end all three went to Lieutenant Trey's going-away party with smoky-smudged eyes and artfully smeared lip stain. And by night's end everyone had copied them, wiping and rubbing until an entire compliment of off-duty soldiers and technicians looked debauched and so very pretty.

Hours and hours later, when Gala looked up to see Mattie kissing Mitaka's cheek and whispering a so-obvious _thank you,_ Techie quite possibly grunted.

Then coughed.

When Mitaka took Matt's chin and lifted it, studying lips and eyes and the slope of cheekbones, Techie's brows went up in the middle in that way he has.

The one that's interested, pleased, or aroused, depending.

 _—_  
_For Winklepicker's sad tummy and very much for a-secret-scribbler, who in three dozen words gave me the blueprint for this gloriously sexy sex. Vim to you Winkle, and heartfelt thanks to you Scribbler. (P.S. Though a soldier's not going to wear makeup on duty, Dopheld Mitaka likes himself a bit of pretty paints when socializing. He just does.)_


	18. Battle Wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Holding Hands:_
> 
> Techie hummed and rocked a little, Matt held one of Gala's hands tight, tight, tight in both of his. 
> 
> Finally, pressing his face against Techie's belly and hiccupping like a weep-weary child, Matt whispered, "That little deer, did you see her? The baby Cattail deer?"

Some things about death don't bother Matt.

Though the war was over by the time he'd been born, Matthew Kee had a good deal of experience with the dead. Battle wounds don't miraculously heal when a Concordance is signed. Injuries fester, poisons settle; people die from wounds acquired in a fight long finished.

That meant, like most kids on a world important to both Republic and Imperial interests, Matt grew up around wounded soldiers. And, like most kids, Matt pretended not to notice missing limbs, scars, evidence of chronic illness.

Unlike most, however, Matt held death up close.

He's a big man, is Matt, and was big even before he was a man. So sometimes, when he was young, Matt helped with the dead.

Mostly it was to fetch an old woman or man who'd set themselves back behind a ramshackle row of shops, tucked themselves into a tiny nest of a couple rooms, always something too small to easily get at, so Matt would quite literally bring out the dead.

It never bothered him doing it because, well, it needed doing. Like the dying had needed doing, something Matt could always tell by the faces of those corpses. They were hurting faces on those women and men, haggard even when their bodies were not so old.

Matt still remembers Lieutenant Colonel Cetta Mahs, in part because she'd been the heaviest of his brief charges, his weight if not more. What he recalls most, though, are the burn scars criss-crossing her heavy arms, neck, marring her face so badly he could glimpse teeth through one cheek.

She'd hung on for twenty years after the war ended and every day of that struggle was visible on her bruised body. He didn't speak it, but Matt was glad to see her dead, burdens lifted at last.

That was then, a dozen years past, and Matt harbors no bad memories about death, but this? This was different.

"I have to go."

Matt didn't wait for Techie to look at him much less speak, he simply found his lover, barked those words, and left the museum—a gleamingly pretty place, full to the rafters with rare specimens of creatures made extinct by the war.

Instead of looking at the last example of egg-laying Cilipar horses or admiring the plumage of Sholain lifebirds, Matt went and hid himself back behind the museum, tucking himself away on a weather-worn bench.

"Can I help Mattie?"

Matt said nothing, but tear streaks said plenty, so Techie sat down beside him, then stroked Mattie's hair while the big man cried himself small in his lover's lap.

They were silent a long while. Techie hummed and rocked a little, Matt held one of Gala's hands tight, tight, tight in both of his. Finally, pressing his face against Techie's belly and hiccupping like a weep-weary child, Matt whispered, "That deer? The baby Cattail deer?"

Before Matt had fled they'd been in the museum less than an hour, but Techie remembered the tiny diorama, inside which rested the stuffed, white-speckled body of an even tinier deer.

"She was so perfect Gala. Did you see? I kept going back because I thought if…if I looked harder next time I'd see that she was breathing."

Techie pressed his free hand over both of Matt's, felt the fast rise and fall of his sweetheart's chest.

"She was so small," Matt mourned, "so perfect and so—her eyes were open, did you see? They were so sweet and I just kept waiting for her to breathe but she's dead and every Cattail deer in the galaxy is dead and she was just a baby."

Matt pulled Techie's hands beneath his chin and sobbed as if he were breaking. And he was because he _had._ No creature experiences war untouched and like those soldiers he'd carried to their final resting places, some of Matt's wounds had gone deep.

So he cried for a little creature who had died too young, for soldiers who had too, and for those who had lived. He cried because pain hurts even when it's not your own.

Fortunately hurts can heal, even old ones. The salve might be a long-needed bacta patch, a garden root, a religious prayer. It might be weeping for a baby deer long dead, or finding comfort against the body of the man you love.

Or sometimes, well sometimes, a wound heals because the man you love, the man with the pale skin and blue mech eyes, your sweet red-haired prince, well he loves you back so much that he wipes your tears away. And then he wipes your runny nose with _his bare fingers._

"OH MY GOD GALA THAT'S DISGUSTING!"

Matt sprang so violently from Techie's lap that he over-balanced and fell right off the bench. Techie followed, reaching, and Matt threw his arm over his face and howled, "WIPE OFF YOUR FINGERS!"

And right there is where the healing happened. Because with a grin Techie reached toward Matt's dripping nose, swiping again at the mucus, and the big man let out such a small squeak that they both ended up on the ground and in absolute hysterics.

It went on awhile.

Hours later they were back on the _Accord,_ long before the planet's night fell. A bit solemn now, Techie and Matt were glad to be aboard ship, surrounded by bright corridors, the busyness of life, and the black of space but for a green world receding.

A world on which they'd each left a bit of themselves, in the form of a few credits. So now, tucked beside a tiny Cattail deer inside a tiny diorama in a museum dedicated to creatures made extinct by a long-finished war, there was a small card which read…

Exhibit sponsored by  
Galacian Asha'Techk and Matthew Kee  
In memory of Lt. Col. Cetta Mahs

—  
_I had something different planned for this prompt but then saw[this wee creature](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/151997608064/fic-30-days-of-techienician-battle-wounds) in a museum. She was so alive-looking but quite dead and for some reason I thought that would make Mattie sad. Then I wrote this and knew why. The mucus part just happened. It often does. (P.S. Some museums do let you sponsor exhibits!)_


	19. Breath and Body Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Date Night:_
> 
> They'd bought the thing at the Voni markets, their first off-ship date. It's all tooth and claw and ugly as sin and looks like something you'd find in a sarlacc's belly. 
> 
> When Matt slips it on, Techie growls softly.

Matt slides the strange brown one onto Techie's wrist.

They'd bought the bracelet at the Voni markets, their first off-ship date. The thing's all tooth and claw and ugly as sin. It looks like something you'd find in a sarlacc's belly, Matt murmurs, slipping it onto his sweetheart's arm. Gala growls softly, and Matt's laughing breath huffs warm against his face.

Patting the bracelet into place Matt looks up. _To dinner now?_ his gaze asks.

Close enough to see all the browns in those beautiful eyes Techie doesn't answer. Instead he is think, think, thinking that body heat is many fine, fine things.

A soporific…Mattie's warm skin has sent him to dreams each of the four times they've made love.

A reassurance…the heat of him calmed Gala minutes before he went to turn down a promotion that would have transferred him off the _Accord._

And now? Now that heat was an aphrodisiac, for isn't that what you call something which flushes your white skin pink and starts to make you hard?

 _Maybe one more?_ Techie's gaze replies.

All right then. Matt looks down at the wide, shallow bowl in which tumble two dozen bracelets. Though Techie's tiny quarters are a hodge-podge of tools and terminals and a frankly astonishing number of pillows, this bowl sits alone on a small table.

Matt pokes carefully through the jewelry, teeth driving into his lip. Techie leans closer, tide-tugged by that mouth. When Matt makes his selection and turns back, he huffs another laugh to find his sweetheart so close. Gala clears his throat and lifts his arm.

Matt places on it a silver helix he took from the core of a broken calcinator. After trimming it to the narrow dimensions of Techie's wrist, Matt crafted a tiny latch too, the whole thing an apology for a date he'd broken when the damned machine broke.

Matt has to push his glasses right on up his nose and lean close to get the small latch to catch. While he's there he shy-not-shy kisses the inside of Gala's wrist, then looks up through lashes. _Now?_ he asks, lips lipping the fluttery pulse.

 _One more,_ Techie answers, and Matt's broad mouth breaks into a grin.

Next Mattie chooses the blue beaded bracelet. The Jom trader had told Mattie the softly-glowing beads were made of Wherwen bones but Techie's not so sure about that. He doesn't care, it's the first bracelet Mattie gave him.

"They're blue as your eyes," he'd said to the floor beside Techie's work bench, six weeks past.

Surprised, Techie had looked up, then stood up, three tiny casement wrenches still in his mouth. He'd blinked at the delicate object in Matt's palm, then held out his arm. He still remembers how Matt's breathing had stuttered, sliding Techie's sleeve up his forearm with both hands. It was at the time the most intimate touch they'd shared in public.

Techie looks at Matt's face as he settles the bone bracelet against the helix. His cheeks are flushed and again they look at each other.

_More?_

_Please._

Matt slides a chunky white bracelet on next. Crafted from old trooper armor, he gave it after Techie had—for the first time though not the last—stripped Matt of his clothes, his responsibilities, his choices. Except the choice to obey, to give in and be commanded and coddled, pleasured and loved. The next day Matt had put it in Techie's hand and quite solemnly saluted him.

Next are three bracelets Techie made years ago, one each of silver wire, copper, and brass, they're a complicated weave threaded with tiny beads. They chitter like chimes against each other as Matt slides them over his lover's narrowed hand.

_Another?_

_Yes._

Because his hands are far too big to fiddle with thread, Matt uses his teeth to gently knot the ties of Gala's orange bracelet, braided from a bit of strapping Matt cut off his own work vest.

They're so close to one another now, all breath and body heat. They both look at two big hands cupping a smaller one and they know they should go to dinner, have their date night, explore this two mile world hovering in space.

They don't.

Then they don't.

Then they _still_ don't.

Instead, one of them wonders: _How much, how big, how long do I get to love you?_ Because Matthew Kee's heart is nearly as large as Matthew Kee, if anyone was wondering. A massive thing in that mountainous chest, it is, was, and ever shall be full of a fire that wants to _warm,_ full to the brim with a fierce giving.

Maybe it's too soon to feel all that. Four months they've known one another, nearly. _Four?_ That word is not _enough._ Mattie needs bigger numbers to wrap round this, but one hundred and twelve ship days won't do either, neither will two and a half thousand hours. No, nope, Matt needs the grandeur of millions and oh he's got them doesn't he? He's got that many moments and more, standing, sitting, or _oh god yes_ lying beside his love and listening, talking, learning him word by breath by touch by moment.

All of a sudden but not suddenly Techie reaches, pulls a chain out of the collar of his own shirt. Dangling from it are two silver bracelets, each shot through with obsidian, their lace-like intricacy belying that they're made of metal.

Techie's brows go up in the middle, a question Matt answers by lifting his arm. Gala smiles flicker-quick, then latches the larger bracelet onto Matt's wrist. The metal is blood warm.

Pressing Gala's hand against his own chest, Mattie takes up the other bracelet as if it's sugar glass-delicate and places it on Techie's wrist.

Techie looks at Matt's big hands as they fold over his, he looks at Mattie's soft, muscular chest (both, yes it's both) and Gala's _gone,_ lip-biting lost in drowsy desire, in giddy love and it's maybe a long while before he notices that his bracelets, all up his slender arm, they're softly chattering.

Mattie's trembling.

 _Is it all right that I love that?_ Techie wants to ask, listening to metal chitter against plastisteel against blue bone. _Is it all right to love it that you want me so much you shake?_

In a way Techie does ask, because he looks at the dance of those bracelets and presses harder against the thudding heart beneath his palm. Matt clutches his hand tighter and moves back, back, back the half dozen feet to Techie's single bed and by the time they fall onto it, they're grinning so giddy-big it's impossible to see the color of their eyes.

They've forgotten about their date night, their dinner, and instead they tumble together and somehow they remember the future.

That's what it is when two men do things for the first time but those things are already so familiar as to be a memory, yes?

When Techie bites Mattie's lip a little too hard he somehow knows the big man will make a small sound of pleasure. When Matt slides his hands into the tight back of Techie's pants he already knows Gala will tip his hips up, ass in reflexive want of cock.

And when Mattie rests one big hand against his own throat and in a voice gone deep begs, "My neck," Techie somehow already knows that his favorite jewels will always be the ones he puts on Mattie's body.

Gala rolls his hips, whispers against his lover's ear, "Your neck?"

Mattie lifts his chin, baring himself. "Here."

Gala sighs, wriggles, then rises. He undoes his pants and let's them drop, gets one leg free but the other tangles, the shoe stuck. Doesn't matter, it's enough. He reaches for the lube under the bed and when he sees Matt's watching, still dressed, Techie plucks at his trousers. "Push them down."

Mattie's barely shucked his pants to his thighs before Techie sits dense and heavy on his quickly-slicked cock. They grin at each other again but this time its primal and they each see the bright in the other's eyes. Slowly Gala starts to rock and rock, until little by little by little Matt enters him.

When he's finally stretched wide and full up, they still. For the longest time they watch each other. Watch white skin go pinker. Pulses in throats hammer harder. They pluck at one another's new bracelets and when Matt opens that beautiful mouth, each shudders when he speaks.

"Please Gala? Please?"

Galacian Asha'Techk can be commanded as well as he can command, so he takes hold of his erection and he strokes, fist loose. He doesn't hurry. He doesn't move much or moan. Even so, each stroke shifts him a little. Tiny movements barely rocking Matt's cock deep.

Mattie mumbles, soft and slurred. "Please…Gal… _ah…_ plea…."

Over the years that bowl of Techie's will fill up with gifts from Matt, spilling its bounty onto table top, fresher counter, until his jewels and gems, necklaces and rings hang from silver hooks all around, Gala's ornaments themselves becoming ornamental.

It's bracelets they'll both love most though, because Techie can wear a dozen, two, three all at once. Because they shift along his beautiful slim arms and draw gazes. But mostly they love the bracelets because they chitter-chatter when a kiss is placed on a wrist, when fingers brush through hair.

Or during slow strokes that rock narrow hips barely at all, but set bracelets to noisy exclamations and encouragements, until finally Mattie obeys their siren song and thrusts up, thrusts deep, coming on a sigh and a moan.

Techie's back arches and as before Gala is _gone,_ all nerves and tight skin and sweaty strokes until Matt goes quiet so quiet that Gala has to look down at him, at his head thrown back, at his beautiful neck bared and—

"Gala, Gala, Gal—oh, _yes."_

—and oh Mattie's pale skin looks beautiful, so beautiful graced with a warm, wet necklace of _pearls._

_—_   
_Yes, it's called a pearl necklace when a man ejaculates onto his partner's neck and yes, I have BlackMorgan to thank for suggesting that Techie's bracelets all have a story behind them, thus inspiring this. Thank you Pirate!_


	20. Lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Pining:_
> 
> Feeling feverish and sorry for himself Techie curls up tight, singing softly as he scrolls through photos of Mattie on his datapad. 
> 
> He flick-flicks through dozens and stops. Stops on the one where Mattie thought he looked silly but Gala? He thought he looked _abundant._

Galacian Asha'Techk doesn't sing often. Or loudly. Or well.

"—round the fen and to the hills, across the brook and river still, we will walk hand-in-hand—"

Mostly when Techie sings, it's to comfort himself.

Today it's to soothe joints tender with loneliness, limbs Techie holds stiff as he moves delicate through his and Mattie's quarters, careful of achy elbows and knees, thin wrists and ankles. He sings while he straightens this, tucks back that. He pauses, then moves that _behind_ this, studying the effect. At the end of his efforts he has one solid thought about it all.

"Fuck, kriffing fuck shit fuck god damn it."

He pushes everything over because he _hurts_ all over and this is stupid makework and his neck is irritated from how he keeps reflexively rubbing at it, the ridiculous tic he developed three seconds after Mattie kissed him there then boarded the shuttle over to Leekee Station.

"Fucking _Leekee,"_ Techie swears, pushing bracelets off a table and wrenches to the floor. Who the kriff names a space station Leekee? Probably the same pfassking assholes who called the god damn planet below Cokk'A.

Techie presses fingers against his neck again and stares at his feet as he paces their little quarters, so big without Mattie in them, and Techie sees one very important thing: he's shuffling. He's not done that for kriffing _years._ Short-stepped it because he'd got tall before other kids, then right after he'd gone and lost his fucking eyes and so he—

Techie stops pacing, scowls at his feet. He tells himself he's not a blind kid any more and he's not taller than everyone else and he can fucking _pick up his feet now._

So Techie does.

Soft breathing because even his insides feel bruised, Techie climbs into their messy bed because though Mattie's only left yesterday, though he'll be back from the station tomorrow, Techie needs everything to be exactly the same until Mattie's back, so he crawls into the bed he left messy, the one which smells of spilled Mandalorian orange wine and come.

The wine was so light neither of them knew they were getting drunk until they _were_ and so when Mattie had asked Gala to feed him wine with his mouth Gala did but he'd never done that before so he kind of _spit_ the wine and Matt had choked _and_ giggled so hard he's drooled everywhere and then he'd apologized for laughing by hugging Gala close and jerking him off and so now the bed smelled _perfect._

It's into this ripe little nest Techie crawls, crooning to himself. "—we will walk hand-in-hand, your mind, your heart, now my land—" His mam had sung the song to her new husband on the occasion of their wedding and it's one of hundreds she taught Gala because if there was one thing his mam's people are all about it's ballads and hymns, poetry and dirges to mark moments profound.

Feeling feverish and sorry for himself Techie curls up tight, singing softly as he scrolls through photos of Mattie on his datapad. He flick-flicks through dozens and eventually he's smiling because half of the photos are Mattie being silly, like this one where he's looking over his shoulder, wearing nothing but Techie's underpants, which are so small on him they pinch into Mattie's flesh. Though Matt had thought he looked silly Gala thought he looked _abundant._

Techie stops singing, pushes his hand into Mattie's track bottoms, slung low on his hips. His fingers lazily fiddle with his cock as he whirs his pupils wide, focusing in on that bit in the photo where the little scrap of cloth cut into Mattie's bum, where he _overflowed._

Gala starts to croon again, but this time it's a ballad about riding and though the ditty wasn't meant to be about sex it hadn't been passed down through five generations of Shihirin for particularly witty couplets, but for lyrics that loaned themselves to images of carnal coupling.

So it's to dreamy visions of this more lusty kind of riding that Techie gives himself over, when his pad chimes, pops up a message—

_Back early on the 25:15 shuttle, baby._

Only three hours, three hours, _three._ Gala's heart thrums, he kicks at the blankets and he knows he's going to fidget himself all twitchy for the next little while, and then his comm chimes again with the arrival of a large audio file, its name all the explanation Techie's given: _We recorded this as a test of the station's new signal boosters, isn't it cool?_

Techie opens the file. A second of listening, then two, and the breath gusts out of him along with the ache. Gala whispers little nonsense noises to the sound, a rhythmic thudding, deep and solid, like the core of a star.

It's Mattie's heartbeat.

—  
_Admiral Winklepicker said something-something 'singing Domhnall' and I had a conniption and then Secret Scribbler said 'a lazy fiddle inside his tracky bottoms' which caused another conniption and also yes, I named the space station and planet after that Scottish soup, Cock-a-leekie. P.S. If you like[things like this](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/153175277919/improbable-press-is-a-for-profit-press-publishing) I did this thing..._


	21. Little Biti Birds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Birdwatching:_
> 
> While most Human xenoporn's all about the slick they make when aroused, all about the swelling at nipple and groin, Shreen doesn't need to see any of that to recognize sexual display, nor to understand that the frolicking of those two Humans? The red one and the yellow?
> 
> Well it's all a preface to the lusty business of breeding.

Among Humans, Canas are known for one thing.

It's not their blueness, which is less a flesh color than the physiology of navy-dark blood sheeting just under the surface of their skin, cooling before it heads back into the vastness of a Cana's substantial body.

It's not the considerable size of Canas either, despite some being larger than Hutts. They look nothing like those creatures, having four limbs, no tail, and better manners.

And it's not that serene temperament for which they're known, though before the Galactic Concordance Canas made surprisingly good soldiers, their abilities rarely compromised by unreasoned emotion.

There are a good half dozen other things for which Canas aren't really known for among Humans, their diet, sexuality, and what they do to their undesirables among them.

No. Among Humans, Canas are known for one thing: their creatures.

This is because Canas have the uncanny ability to discover and to tame all manner of animals from all manner of worlds, from the western reaches to the unknown regions.

These creatures, always non-sentient, docile, and unusual, are then sold at markets, in parks, through holonets and on space stations. Asti lizards that purr like felinx, egg-laying dire-cats small as chickens, furry little bark-mites.

Shreen's been at it a hundred years and she's sold every sort of thing to every sort of being, but right now she specializes in phants, hand-sized little things with big flappy ears, long prehensile trunks, and the cutest little trumpeting call. When they're happy a phant will wag its big bottom, flick a skinny little tail, and bugle for minutes at a time. Today she sold her entire stock to the park throng within an hour. Now she had time to admire the holiday crowds playing in the fountains, her eye again and again drawn to two Humans, playing in the water like Canian Biti birds.

Now a Biti bird's anything but itty-bitty. Taller than Humans and nearly as bulky as a Cana, they're nevertheless sweet-natured and affectionate and damned if those two Humans aren't acting just _like_ a pair.

Frisky as any Biti bird they flit in and out of Lynna's fountains, bobbing and dashing, calling and cooing, bare-naked but for tiny, shiny water suits, and a crop of red hair on one, the other with yellow.

The red Human's stronger than he looks, except Shreen's pretty sure the big yellow one only mock-struggles each time he's captured. Even with his arms pressed to his side he always manages to trip them down onto shady grass, where they otter all over each another, until one runs into the fountains again, the other follows, and they start all over.

Now Shreen knows her animal biology, oh yes she does, so she'd be willing to bet double the day's earning that those two are mated to each other and that they're in rut.

While most Human xenoporn's all about the slick they make when aroused, all about the swelling at nipple and groin, Shreen doesn't need to see any of that to recognize sexual display, nor to understand that their frolicking is a preface to the lusty business of breeding.

As if following her train of thought, the yellow one squirms on the soft lawn and pecks at the red one's neck with his big bill of a nose. It's clear he wants a kiss but Red rolls onto his belly, laughing his refusal into the grass.

Quicker than quick the big one rises and flits away and sure enough, the red one's up in seconds, looking for his mate.

 _There._ Shreen and Red spot him at the same time, watch him dance through the spray, his laugh lifted by warm winds. He bobs and he weaves and he flutters through a dozen dancing jets, his tiny pants catching light bright and sharp.

Red is as drawn to his love as a Biti bird to its life-mate, and as he steps from shade and back into the sun it's clear his featherless skin is growing darkly pink. Again, the big Human must follow her thoughts because he glances at the pale suns and steps from the fountains. Shaking his shaggy head he heads right for Red, who goes to tip-toe with a grin, arms wide. As the big Human swoops in, Red wraps arms and legs around his mate, who simply walks off with him like that, carrying his love away.

Shreen smiles serenely the rest of the day. Even puts a talon into a few fountains, too.

*

Gala loves nuzzling and tending. Loves when Mattie cherishes him with caresses and whispers. Through embarrassed mumbles and tentative touches over the months they've both learned that they each love being cuddled, cradled close, _babied._

So right now Mattie was cross-legged on the plush rug of their inn, holding Gala close, this lankiest of infants who squirms while Mattie tries to dry his bare body.

Tutting as his bearded baby—Matt loves how fast Gala's hair grows when most of the rest of him is so _smooth—_ fidgets, Matt rubbed him warm with a soft towel, careful round his sun-pinked shoulders and chest, whisper-worshipping _angel,_ to him, and _fairy,_ and _my beautiful dream._

While those were pretty words, oh yes, Techie right now was exceedingly disinclined to solemnity. There were just a few hours before the shuttle back to the _Accord,_ and so he was restive in Matt's arms, he wanted to _play_ with his giant, he wanted to fucking _frolic._

"I'm a _wet_ dream," Gala corrected, opening his legs and pushing a big hand _down._ As soon as Mattie tried to _dry_ him there, Techie clamped that giant paw between damp thighs and rumbled again, "No no no, mmmm'your _wet_ dream Mattie," then he darted in, bit Matt's neck and, scrambling up, he crawled away fast across the plush rug.

Desire flaming fast with the sight of his true love's naked ass, Mattie was on Gala's back in seconds.

With a happy huff Techie froze, then pressed his chest to the rug and slid his legs wide. Matt scrambled backward, shoved that great beak of his right against Gala's hole and he _pushed._

"In," Techie panted, pressing back, "In, in, in."

Matt obliged with another beaky shove that breached his boy— _"Mattieeeee"_ —then he went away…

…and reappeared between Techie's pale thighs, wriggling wide shoulders through, taking hold of hips, and opening his mouth wide for cock.

"No, no, no," Gala chanted, petulant, even as precome dripped in a glistening-thin strand onto Matt's waiting tongue. For a second Gala opened his own mouth in reflex, then he clambered round Matt's body, turning until he presented the ripeness of his bare ass over Matt's mouth. He looked over his shoulder. It was enough.

Again Matt took hold of Techie's hips, again he opened his mouth, only this time he stuck out his tongue. With a high hum at getting what he wanted, Techie lowered himself down until he felt the hot slick of that tongue enter him. Then Gala started rocking and pfassking _fuck_ wasn't that the best thing?

Because know this: Matthew Kee is big all over. That chest, those ears, that mouth? He's all of a piece is Mattie. So his tongue? Well that thing's as lavish as the rest of him. It's _long,_ it reaches _deep._

So Mattie stuck that thing out and still as stone he damn well stayed while on it his randy sweetheart rocked himself frantic, babbled himself breathless, moaning, "Oh Mattie, oh Mattie," every time he penetrated himself with that warm, wet tongue.

The thing about Gala is he may look delicate as smoke and pale as a Tatooine sun, but he's strong in belly and thigh, he can _ride_ until his voice is hoarse and sweat slicks down the valley of his spine. Because sometimes the ride's as good as orgasm, the pleasure burrowing down deep, a tide pulling at the core of him.

So now, right now, here, with Mattie, Gala rocked and moaned, blissed out even as his untouched cock drizzle-dripped onto Matt's chest.

The first time they did this Matt tried to _do._ He wiggled his tongue inside Gala's body, he awkward-wrapped his arm up and over, down and under, he tried to jerk Gala off but he learned fast that Gala _was_ getting off. So now Matt goes still and lets Gala use his big, big body to drown them both in moans and want.

"Mmmm," Techie sighs, rocking faster as if he's so close, nearly there, about to come and he is, but it's a coming undone, it's shaking thighs and a heart beating too fast, it's an almost-sore cock that wants touching and finally Techie falls forward, his hands on Matt's hipbones, then, chest to belly, Gala goes down on Mattie.

Tongue flicking, slim fingers sliding down to pull balls just right, Gala knows how to drown his sweetheart, how to pull him under under under.

"Gala Gala Gala," a pant a whisper a prayer, because Mattie's solemn still, an evangelist for this religion, the church of _them,_ so he breathes his devotion and groans his praise and at the sound of Gala's answering moans Matt bows his back and comes fine and deep in Gala's mouth.

Techie stills but for swallowing, slides both arms under Matt's thighs and _hugs._ It's a long minute of Mattie grunting himself calm before Gala collapses onto his love's legs and starts to hump against his hard belly. Running his hands up along the backs of Gala's parted thighs, Matt waits, then waits some more, until Gala's thrusts are short, sharp jabs. Then Matt pushes one spit-slick finger into Gala's hole and with a quick grope of his own hand between them Techie spurts with a drawn-out groan.

They still again. They could doze but they don't. There are just a two hours left on-planet and both know they should make the most of it, again turn their faces to the sun, and they will, in a minute, after melted bones are back and warm muscles can move.

In the meantime Techie wriggles and laughs at the wet mess between them, then he sliiiiides his body back—Mattie has the pretty present of a full moon rising right over his face—and Techie cleans up his sweetheart with darting licks and lippy pecks, like a little bitty red-bearded bird preening his pretty mate.

—  
_One night recently I passed a woman standing at the curb, her arms wide open. Across the street was her boyfriend who crossed the road toward her and scooped her up. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he just_ kept walking, _carrying her away like that. Her. smile. was. so. big. What may have happened after I've no idea. I do know that riding[a tongue you can practically see from space](http://hey-big-deal.tumblr.com/post/155632018949/you-can-quite-possibly-see-adam-drivers-tongue) is what happened afterward for Techie._


	22. Raining Cats And...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Rainy Days:_
> 
> “Aren’t redheads supposed to have freckles?”
> 
> Matt's going to blame that unexpected question for what happened next.

“Aren’t redheads supposed to have freckles?”

Matt's going to blame that question for what happened next.

"Your boyfriend. He doesn't have any."

Matt had no clue what redheads were supposed to have; Techie's the first he's ever known up close. So while Matt thought about how to reply, the spaceport officer watched the redhead in question, who was already through immigration and waiting patiently a dozen meters away.

"Um, he's half Caver?"

Matt says this as if in doubt, though he knows Gala's dad was born in the eastern caves on Tund, body white as chalk.

Why the state of his boyfriend's skin had anything to do with being allowed onto Aradia, Matt wasn't sure, but he looked at the officer expectantly. After a long few moments frowning at Gala she sullenly waved Matt through.

The delay at immigration meant they had to hurry for the shuttle taking them to the old Imperial base on which they'd be working for the next week, so they were half-running when they flew through port doors and—

—out into heavy rain.

Matt stopped dead, eyes comically-wide as he stared at his feet.

"What're you doing Ma—"

Techie stopped dead, too, staring at their joined hands. Mattie was trembling.

A hiss, a low hiss, Matthew Kee was _hissing_ at the ground and then, as if a switch was flipped, he jerked off his coat, covered Gala's head, then his own, and dragged them both back toward the port.

"Mattie, the shuttle's right—"

Matt pulled and Matt is _big._ So Techie went, then so did the shuttle, right past space port doors.

Inside Matt dropped the coat and started rubbing the rainwater off Techie's arms, as if the stuff would burn, because _that's what rain does_ where Matt's from.

Techie found this out later that night, and he felt badly about that. How could he have not known?

So after their shifts, after they were tucked up tight in a narrow bed—off-ship assignments usually meant communal living and dinky, single beds—Techie asked and Mattie told. Told how, during hostilities between the Empire and the Republic, both had plundered his planet, razing her timber, harvesting her hydrogen, mining away her mountains. What had been left was foul air, leaded earth, and rain that burned like acid.

"I had a stuffed felinx when I was really small," Mattie whispered against Gala's mouth, felt the flicker of his sweetheart's grin at the idea that Mattie was ever truly little. "I dragged her around everywhere, but there was a week once when it rained and rained and no one went out and I couldn't find Clea anywhere in the house. Then after…"

To the tiny boy still inside this big man, that felinx had been nearly-real, so the big man's voice cracked and fell silent.

Techie stroked his sweetheart's hair, felt his chest expand with a deep breath. "When it finally dried outside, I found Clea under a tree. Some of her fur had come out and what was underneath was a strange, bad kind of soft. I tried to take her inside so my father could fix her but she fell apart along the way."

Mattie took another deep breath and when he let it out, Gala took it in. They did this a little while until they were dizzy and warm and a strange, good kind of soft.

*

Most of the _Accord_ crew finished work at the base a day earlier than planned. While most groused about Aradia's persistently nasty weather, Galacian Asha'Techk and Matthew Kee did not.

Nope, they went a half mile from the base and had themselves a picnic. They brought with them a tiny guest, courtesy of Techie. She sat pride-of-place on her own little napkin, tucked up under her very own small umbrella.

While Techie and Mattie got absolutely _soaked_ playing in the rain, Clea Jr. made it back to base untouched by a single drop.

—  
_I gotta write some perky stuff for these two. *looks at list* Oh great. Sickness and missing home are coming up; those are perky. Yes. Well._


	23. Star Struck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Star-Gazing:_
> 
> Sometimes stars have red hair and a troubled history. Sometimes men like Mattie are star struck by them.
> 
> Techie doesn't mind, he kind of likes Brigadier Hux, too.

"It was sad what happened to him," Techie says, bobbing his chin at the holo.

Matt nods but also makes loud _shushes._

Techie continues eating a plate of glowblue noodles with his fingers, sucking noisily. After the third _shhhhh_ from Matt, Techie just gets up and eats in the fresher.

It's a couple hours later, after dinner's done, after the documentary is too, after they're in bed that Mattie says, "Sorry. I just wanted to watch that."

Techie yawns and grunts himself into a long stretch. "S'okay. You have a crush on the Brigadier."

Matt grins in the low light. "Kind of. The thing is, Hux was…good. I mean I never met him personally of course, and the accident happened about a half year after I was assigned to the _Accord,_ but he would give these speeches about the Concordance. About how important it was to—" Matt strives for a clipped and formal tone. "—fight for the continued cessation of fighting. It was kind of weirdly-phrased but his faith in what he was saying was absolute and it…"

Gala rolls toward Mattie, tucks his head under his chin. "Inspired?"

A hum, then a huff, then a nod that thumps chin to crown. "He made us believe what he believed, you know? He'd have had an amazing career. He'd have made general before he was thirty-five. He was the youngest brigadier ever, did you know?"

Techie grunts affirmation. "I could hear the whole documentary from the fresher, Mattie. You turned it up _after_ I left. Blah blah a fast-rising star in the Imperial army! Blah blah an orator of unusual passion! Blah blah strikingly handsome!"

Gala salutes the vicinity of Matt's chest and in an accent far more like the brigadier's says, "Brigadier Armitage Hux, architect of our sustained peace!"

Matt thump-thumps his chin to Gala's head. "Don't make fun."

Rolling back, whirring his mech eyes wide, Techie says softly, "I wasn't Mattie, truly."

Matt smoothes Gala's hair from his eyes. "You look like him, you know."

Gala grins. "My star struck baby. You just think all pretty gingers look alike."

"Only when they do. The brigadier isn't as pretty as you though."

Gala tucks up close again. "So tell me about the speeches you heard him make."

Mattie grins again, sticks out his tongue and has himself a thinky thought. After a moment he looks at Gala, the tiny light above their bed winking a double reflection in his glasses.

Gala gazes at those tiny twin stars, all the universe he will ever need. Then he burrows closer as Mattie begins to talk.

—  
_In my AU of Star Wars, the Galactic Concordance held; there's peace between Empire and Republic. So Hux was never maniacal, but he was the same committed man, making it to brigadier. Then he had[an accident](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/145680720589/fic-murderers-traitors-and-thieves-the-galactic) that halted his military career. From there he meets an infamous man named Kylo Ren. But that—"Murderers, Traitors, and Thieves"—is another story; one I'll finish after this 30 days series._


	24. Worried Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sickness:_
> 
> When Mattie is sick Techie is a mess. He paces and tends. He worries, he fidgets, and he frets. This has unexpectedly led to spilled blue milk soup, a bloody nose, and strange sex. 
> 
> Then Mattie figured out how to make Gala feel better...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Cylin, who [draws](http://cylin-aka-ankamo.tumblr.com/) and [writes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cylin/pseuds/Cylin) beautiful things.

Humans are often their own worst enemy.

Not so, Matthew Kee. There's really more than enough to plague him in a big, wide galaxy without adding to the trouble himself.

So when Matt's got a cold? Well, he does _not_ 'troop on.' When his ears are full of sand, his joints ache like they need an oil bath, when he sounds like a wheezy old holo of Darth Vader, well Matthew Kee calls in _sick._

Much to Galacian Asha'Techk's dismay.

There are two good reasons for this.

Reason the first: Gala's manager doesn't respond well anymore when he says, 'my boyfriend is poorly, I'm staying home to care for him.' Now Hilo gives Matt the stink eye if he so much as clears his throat twice.

The second reason Techie's not good when Matt's not good is that Techie _frets._

At first this looked like pacing their quarters, tugging his t-shirt hems out of true. Mattie'd wake, mumbling, "I'm fine sweetheart, really," then try to rise and prove it.

_No, no, no._

So with great effort Techie learned to tame his fruitless fidgeting. Instead he _tended._ He brought Mattie blue milk soup, he tucked him in, he tried to blow him off.

Wait.

What?

It happened only the once. After Matt had consumed a lot of hot soup and been tightly tucked in, Matt's big body got _hot._ So in his sleep Mattie self-regulated. He kicked off the covers and dropping his legs open.

Wide.

Yes, he was flaccid, yes he was asleep, but also yes his breathing was raspy and labored and Techie figured if he just, maybe, got down in there, between Matt's legs, and sucked a bit, that would be…comforting?

So he did.

And it was, actually.

Sleeping Mattie's muscles went soft, his breathing evened out, and—

—he rolled over and rammed his knee into Gala's head.

Techie's nose kind of crunched, Mattie woke, Techie bled, and Matt cried so hard—"I'm sorry Gala, I'm sorry!"—that he couldn't breathe right for the rest of the night.

So.

By Matt's next cold Techie knew what he had to do. Nothing. So he traded restless _motion_ in favor of sitting freakishly still beside his sleeping lover. And watching to make sure Mattie kept breathing.

Techie's tech brain knew Matt would breathe with or without his wide-whirred eyes _willing_ it, but good luck telling Techie's lizard brain.

Then Matt woke from a nightmare about Ylesian white worms crawling into his mouth to find Gala's fingers suspended just above his lips and the falling off the bed and shouting they both did—"You didn't look like you were fucking breathing Mattie _that's_ why!" "For the kriffing love of kriff Gala I nearly had a heart attack!"—resulted in an intense period of severely strained relations.

Then. About two hours later. A tissue held tight over his chronically leaking nose, Matt and Techie nested into the sheets and blankets and Matt explained how Techie could help him when he was ill.

And just like that all was right with their world.

Now any time Mattie's sick, Techie walks around their quarters bare but for shiny-brushed hair and bracelets. Though Matt will never get a erection when he's near extinction, he loves watching Techie putter about in the nude, bracelets softly clucking to themselves.

He loves when Gala's distracted by some little chore or machine and yet is half-hard and drizzling, he loves too when he's sweetly soft as a Ylesian worm—"I meant it as a compliment baby." "I know you did Mattie, I know."

Today his naked darling even wore that white duraplas belt he loves so much, slung low on his bare hips. When he sees Mattie's awake again, Techie sways away, _bending_ to fetch Mattie's medicine.

Mucus may prevent Matt from getting hard but it doesn't keep him from tugging Techie close by that chunky belt, then capturing some of his salty drizzle on a swiping thumb.

"Oh, Mattie."

Techie wants to feed Mattie warm soup, tuck him in, rock him to sleep, but instead he's right now wriggling on the bed and trying not to, then he's wriggling and making noise, then he's, he's, oh he's—bolting upright as Mattie coughs himself nearly blue as Gala's eyes.

There's a frantic bit of tucking in then. A lot with the tucking. Frantically. Techie's weeping hard-on is forgotten, his bracelets chattering stern as blanket corners are creased military-tight and pillows aggressively plumped.

That most of this has to be undone so Matt can sit up and eat his soup results in a string of Caver curses Techie'd learned from his mam who'd learned from his dad, and _then_ there's more tucking, but right after _that_ there's more blue-faced coughing, and finally Techie remembers the last thing he wanted to do for Mattie.

After he's got his breath back, after Gala strokes his hair and murmurs, "lie back baby," well, after all that Gala cuddles close and he rocks Mattie.

Soft, soft, sweetly soft thrusts of his hips to Matt's, gently rocking his sweetheart over and over.

That Gala gets harder and wetter doesn't matter, no, not until Mattie, drowsy-eyed and crooning encouragements, falls asleep.

After long moments of listening to Mattie's steady breathing, Techie tip-toes to the fresher, takes care of a persistent part of his anatomy, then crawls back into bed, boneless. Curling against his one true love he falls asleep.

After long moments of listening to Gala's steady breathing, Mattie opens his eyes with a grin, softly kissing his one true love's brow.

Matthew Kee knows the galaxy's full of things to plague him oh yes. But here, in these little rooms full of their big, big love, Mattie gets to do something wonderful: He gets to take care of Gala, by letting Gala take care of him.

—  
_For Cylin, who[dedicated a sexy Techie and Matt drawing](http://cylin-aka-ankamo.tumblr.com/post/154307735141/give-matt-all-the-love-title-suggested-by) to me. Here we are Cylin, in a sexy little giving circle, thank you! P.S. P.S. P.S. [CYLIN DID IT AGAIN](http://cylin-aka-ankamo.tumblr.com/post/162780749921/techies-junk-this-is-from-one-of). Holy smokes. Cylin I heart you so much. _


	25. The Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Missing Home:_
> 
> You can miss a home you don't have.
> 
> Better still to fill the one you will.

Techie wouldn't survive, he knew that. He wouldn't. It didn't matter that before Galacian knew Matthew, Gala survived. Survived losing his da, his eyes, his roots when he went off-planet. Because sure, anyone could survive hanging by their nails over a ship's core.

Just kriffing hold _on._

Hold until your joints ache and your muscles shake. Until your hope for help deserts you, until you wonder why you're trying so hard to survive when no one knows you're there.

When no one will come for you.

Gala knows how to hold on but he wouldn't even try this time, not any more. Without Mattie there was no point.

"Here's your muffins sir."

Techie shook his head, backed away from the bag as if it were a proximity bomb and the one nearest was the one who'd get done. That meant this second looey, in her crooked baker's cap and striped apron.

The woman blinked slow and patient and Techie realized what he was doing. He muttered thanks, took the bag, shuffled away.

Techie frowned at his feet, watched them scuff the warm metal decking. "Fuck." He stopped walking and stared at the decking, the bag in his hand, his big feet. Twenty-years melted away and he was fourteen again, blind about how to move forward.

He wanted to be in stasis, right here, right now, suspended at the edge of the possible, at the edge of hope and holding on.

"Fuck," he mumbled again and again he moved— _scuff, drag, scuff, drag_ —because he _couldn't_ stay right where he was and even a crawl will get you where you're going eventually.

So in no time Techie was there. His floor, his corridor, his door. He stood motionless, listened to his heart thudding loud. It was off, missing beats. Brain full of static he tried to count the twisted tempo, couldn't.

He palmed his door. Stepped through. Went still in the dark.

Long seconds later he heard something harsh. It wasn't until the room filled with a low and drowsy light that Techie realized he was shaking so hard the bag in his fist was rustling sharp.

"Angel," murmured Matthew Kee, stretching long and soft-boned in Techie's narrow bed.

Then Mattie reached and Techie grunted a hurt sound, abandoned the bag, clambered into the bed fully-dressed. Matt tugged him close, his front to Gala's back. "S'wrong?" he whispered, mouth soft under Gala's long hair.

Techie answered with silence. It was like his feet. It was his body and mind in retrograde, like a planet spinning the wrong way, almost going back in time. He wanted to speak. He couldn't.

Slowly the hand on his chest went soft and he was sure Mattie slept again. Then slow as that hand Mattie shifted, 'til he was on Gala's other side, his bare bottom sticking right out from under the covers as he balanced on the edge of the narrow mattress. Reflexively Techie pulled him close, safe.

That brought the words somehow.

"Would you…" Techie closed his eyes, once again that blind kid who'd shuffled, yes, but who'd learned not to give up, learned how to get where he wanted to go. "…move in?"

He didn't look up. So he didn't see Mattie's sad realization. That Gala had fretted about this. That he'd thought by asking this thing he was risking everything.

Bumping their foreheads together he said, "I asked the housing officer about that a couple weeks ago. She said there's nothing now but she'd comm when double quarters come available."

Galacian Asha'Techk grunted another sound, relief-joy-wanting-having. He hadn't known it was possible to miss a home he didn't have until he had it and the ache vanished. Somewhere on this ship were quarters that would be theirs, Mattie's and his.

Gala held Mattie so hard his arms shook.

They would mark every inch with themselves, he resolved-dreamed-knew. Their hands pressed one over the other on the fresher wall, while the man more awake nuzzled the man still grumble-sleepy. Their elbows sharp on the tiny dining table, talking about the day. Their bare asses on a little kitchen counter top as they took turns watching a dick slide slowly in.

Gala's tools would migrate everywhere. Mattie would leave his giant shoes in the middle of the room. Techie's bracelets would turn up in the bed. Matt would lose his glasses every other day. Gala would promise to get rid of some of his pillows because he had too many. Mattie would buy him more.

The space would be too small because ship-space always was.

It would be big enough to hold necessary things. Laughter. Words. Hopes.

It would be home.

They would be home.

_—  
Sehnsucht is the longing for we know not what, a yearning for a place to call home. Techie and Mattie have found theirs. Finally._


	26. After the Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Before They Met:_
> 
> They were drunk. They were. 
> 
> Otherwise Matthew just never would have said anything like what he'd just said.

"—there were Egetian field mice living in my hair."

Galacian Asha'Techk belched in shock.

"I _know,"_ said Matthew Kee. "I didn't think it was very nice either."

They were drunk. They were. Otherwise Matthew would never have said anything like what he'd just said. Because Matt knows it makes Gala a little bit murderous to hear the mean things people have said to him over the years.

However, they were drunk. They were. And Techie had said, plain as anything, "I love your curls," which naturally made Matt reply, "I had a supervisor once who said I should shave them off. That they were a galactic disgrace and it looked like there were Egetian field mice living in my hair."

After Mattie's confession Gala was stern with himself. _Do not do not do not_ _say anything mean._ Because that wouldn't change Mattie's past, would it?

Yes, well. It was like that old saw that says 'don't think about pink-bottomed Hutts' and of course suddenly all you can do is think about pink-bottomed Hutts.

"I'd have spaced her Mattie. Him. Them. Right out the nearest airlock. Because they're wrong and you're pretty, you're so so _preeeetty,"_ Techie crooned, suddenly thinking about Mattie's pink bottom.

Matt sighed. He didn't want to make his sweetie homicidal, but it was nice anyhow. Nice having someone want to murder someone who didn't like your hair.

"One time a kid said mine looked like bantha shit. I didn't even know what they meant until I saw bantha shit. Did you know it's kind of orange?"

They were drunk. They were. Otherwise Techie wouldn't have said what he did because he knows it makes Mattie sad, hearing the ways people used to pick on him.

However, they were drunk so Matt slammed the bottle of brandy onto their tiny dining table, missed their tiny table entirely, accidentally assaulting his own knee. "Ouch," he whispered, pain sparking his vision dark.

When he could see again Gala was gone. No. Gala was on the floor, crooning to Mattie's bruised knee and sort of choking the brandy bottle.

Touched that his sweetheart would murder even the inanimate for him, it wasn't until a tear landed in Gala's hair that Matt realized he was crying.

When Techie looked up, Mattie said simply, "I'll let you."

 _I will let you protect me,_ is what he meant. I'll let you shout for me when I can't, help me when I'm helpless, hold me when I shake. I'll let you see me snotty and weepy and small. I'll let you Gala, because I love that you are you. That your hair shines more orange than any sun, that your heart is bigger than any planet. When you enter a room you always look for me, and when you find me you let me need and want and protect you in return.

Gala nodded at his sweetheart, nodded quite a bit because there was a lot of _yes_ and _thank you_ and _always_ to convey.

When he was done doing that Techie put down the murdered brandy bottle and stood, tugging Mattie to him.

They tripped, because they were drunk. They were. It was fine though because they weren't so drunk that they couldn't catch each other.

Whatever happened before they met mattered. Of course it did. Because their past had helped make a very big man gentle, a skinny man fierce. Their before had led to their now, to their _this._

And _this_ was simple, and simply this:

It was love.

*

Later it was a little earthier.

Later came coming because kisses convey one thing, murder another, but a cock in the ass expresses many things that can't quite be said in any other way.

Like the "Yes, yes, _yesss,"_ of encouragement when your lover tugs your pink bottom close, sliding his erection in, slow, stuttery, with sighs huffed out against your neck.

Like the "Mmmmm," of your name growled from his mouth and into your ear as you ask, then plead, then demand that he fuck hard, come first, that he push, scratch, make _noise._

So Gala did. Because doing it conveyed other things, these just as necessary, just as primal. Trust. Care. Unity.

Matt held his legs wide and snarled his _yesses,_ because he wanted to ache later, he wanted their union through sweat and scratches, come and bruises and an ear still ringing because when Gala whispered, Mattie bit his pale wrist until he roared.

What came after that was another sort of primitive.

Techie used mouth and tongue on Matthew's body, an animal cleaning his mate. He probed with his fingers to get at the mess inside, then he licked inside to get at the mess.

Matt whispered so Techie bit at his ass until he roared. He pushed Matt's legs higher, pushed his fingers inside again, then mouthed and sucked until there was a hot new mess between them to lick, then rub his red hair and chest through, until he smelled like his mate.

Until they smelled of _each other,_ like a nest of Egetian field mice maybe, curled up naked and sticky and close.

—  
_I was all prepared to write a sort of sad 'before they met,' but then the boys showed up drunk and this is what happened. Emo-murder-love. Emo-murder-love is what happened._


	27. What Else?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Family Gathering:_
> 
> Had Matthew Kee known in advance, he just might have hyperventilated. 
> 
> Years later Matt still wasn't sure if not knowing had been a good thing or bad...

Had Matthew Kee known in advance, he may have hyperventilated.

Matt's done that. When presented with a situation beyond his scope he's panted himself dizzy and, make no mistake, meeting Gala's mother would have triggered such a response.

_Had Matt known he was meeting her._

"…always loved hardware y'know? Wires and switches and things."

The rangy-tall woman had sat at his otherwise-empty mess hall table, placing a plate mounded with puff cakes between them.

That should have been Matt's first clue.

They'd started easy enough. The Human with the head full of white hair had joked that her eyes had been bigger than her stomach and inveigled him to share.

They'd got to talking, because of course you can't rush puff cakes, syrup-sweet and chewy as they are.

"—no, don't live anywhere near the sector but I jumped on the job anyway," Ciann said, introductions having been made seconds before they started methodically gobbling cake. "But working a week on ship's hardware for the _Accord?_ That'll be a string on my gasan. Plus, my son's an engineer on board."

After that they'd gone deep tech. Matt first enthralled by Ciann's system-wide experience, then raving about a new sensor array. Ciann listened close, just like Gala always did.

That should have been Matt's second clue.

"—oh they could never replace the DG4s though; did you ever work on one? Before either of us were born, those. I've always loved hardware, y'know? Wires and switches and things. Now that computer code stuff…"

"…you can't _see_ it," Matt agreed, then leaned secret-close. "Except my boyfriend? He knows all about that stuff, knows how to get inside a machine's brain and make it dance. He's _magic."_

Matt smiled serene, as if he'd just shared a fact both fine and rare. Ciann grinned and murmured right back, "My baby can do that, too."

And there was Matthew Kee's third clue.

Matt's a smart man. Quiet enough to seem slow to some, slow Matt is not. So when that particular diminutive came from this stranger's mouth he narrowed his eyes, belatedly noticing a thing. Several things.

The first was this: the woman's eyes were green.

Now Matt's never seen Gala's birth eyes, just his big blue mechs, but Matt has seen lots of pics from when his love was fourteen, ten, eight. And then there are those impossible images, the ones Matt coos over, the ones where Gala's just teeny soft limbs, fat cheeks, and sweet, pale, _green_ eyes.

The second thing. Ciann's eyebrows, they were a faded red. There were even a faint few streaks of the same color in her white hair.

"My mam's people go grey early," Gala said the day Mattie huffed soft in his face, peering close at his sweetie's two-day beard, stroking his fingertip over and over a tiny patch of a dozen white hairs.

_Baby._

Then there was that. A diminutive he'd called Galacian since the second time they'd made love, a small word for a rangy-tall man, one his lover had accepted with a pleased whisper. "My mam and da used to call me that."

Matt's eyes had gone _uh-oh_ wide but Gala curled up secret-close. "…makes me feel loved."

Neither questioned the appropriateness of love so few months after meeting, much less just minutes after filling each other's mouths with come.

Though perhaps Matt was about to question the woman seated across from him. However, before he said one word Techie appeared and he said none.

There was Matt's answer.

The tall man who loved puff cakes? The one with the early-greying beard and a love of being called _baby?_ That man appeared beside their mess hall table and he sat himself down snug on Mattie's lap. He smiled serenely at both woman and man, plucked up a tiny bit of puff cake and opened his own mouth as he fed it to his lover.

In bed hours later Matt learned that Ciann Techk had told her boy she was coming to the _Accord_ 'soon,' but had failed to define _soon._ At about that same time Matt learned Techie'd long ago "told mam you might pass out from nerves when you met her; guess that's why she sort of surprised us."

It was just after Gala's first soft snore, that Matt said, "What else?"

Techie grunted himself awake. "What?"

"Your mam, what else did you tell her? About me?"

"Oh." Techie took a deep breath.

Matt closed his eyes to the dark, the better to hear.

The silence grew long.

Then ominous.

Then about the time Matt started to hyperventilate, he heard a soft snor—

"Gala!"

"WHAT?"

_"What else did you tell your mother about me?"_

Techie groaned and rolled. Mashing his face into the soft-warm-solid of Matt's chest he mumbled, "Jus' things. Stuff. Mam and me…we always…talk."

Frowning, Matt figured that was all he'd get and so he waited for soft snores again but instead, after another precious face-mash against his chest, Techie murmured, "Tol' her you're so big. N'so so so sssweet. Blon'. And y'hold me an' love me and kiss m…"

Between each slow-spoken word the pauses grew longer until finally those wheezy little sounds of sleep were all Matt heard.

Pulling Gala close-tighter still, Matt fell asleep beaming.

That, however, was not quite the end of that.

 _What else…?_ became a familiar refrain for Matthew Kee across his and Gala's many, many years.

When Galacian said things very like, "I messaged mam today. Told her about your trip to Leekee…" _what else_ was very like Matthew's reply.

Which is how Mattie learned that the time he'd had that three-day assignment on Leekee Station? Yes, well not only had Gala shared with his mam his homesick longing for his love, he'd also taken her long-distance advice and this was why Mattie received several pornographic pics of Gala diddling inside his tracky bottoms.

"Mattie! Of _course_ I didn't send the photos to her, too!" was Gala's scandalized reply to Matt's reply.

And so it went, variations on this conversation, a conversation had for fifty years, right up to the day they laid Ciann Techk to rest.

"Mam was so worried you'd be nervous giving her eulogy. I'm so proud of you Mattie."

Mattie beamed. He was proud of himself. He'd spoken from the heart about the fine woman who had made this fine man. Deep voice strong and clear, Matt's words had reached right up to temple rafters and to every ear of Ciann's five hundred mourners.

'course it hadn't hurt that Matt's beautiful white-bearded baby had soothed him calm a couple hours prior to the funeral.

Walking to the spaceport after the service, Mattie brushed his lips against his husband's ear. "Mmm, thank you for the distraction before baby, it really helped."

Gala softly thumped the old gasan string drum he carried. A gift from his mam, he'd played it outside the temple, as her body burned. "Mam was so worried you'd be nervous giving her eulogy. I'm so proud of you Mattie."

Matthew Kee did not break stride. He didn't even say the two fateful words.

Techie heard _what else?_ anyway.

Which is how Matt learned that the rimming Gala'd given him a couple hours earlier, the right royal eating out that had soothed his nerves such that he could say true and fine things about a gifted engineer, musician, and woman?

It had been _his dead mother-in-law's_ idea.

Interestingly, the only reason Matt didn't yell, _"Your mam knew I liked getting your tongue up my ass? Oh my god Gala what else did you tell her?”_ was that he was too busy trying to strangle himself with the strings of Ciann's gasan.

Alas, they were too short.

_—  
I got stuck at one part of this thing and then Admiral Winklepicker did what she does: Threw a few word shapes at me and I was unstuck. What else? Well, the Admiral's awfully good throwing word shapes for herself, too. [Go read](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Winklepicker/pseuds/Winklepicker)! _


	28. Covenant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Wedding:_
> 
> For as long as Mattie and Techie have words, or fingers that can dance words over bare skin, there will be a very special way they say and say and say… 
> 
> …us, you, me, mine, always.

Matt and Techie marry each other most every year.

Legally, Matthew Kee and Galacian Asha'Techk were wed nearly a year to the day that one sat beside the other in the mess hall, and two pale men went giddy-red with stammering and shy smiles.

They got married before that though, in the liminal light of ship's night, cuddled close high over the slumbering plants in the hydroponic garden.

It was eight months after that very first date which had taken place just here, a vast, humid space lit only by the pinprick light of a few distant LEDs. Just like that first time, one stood right behind the other on the narrow gantry over the garden below, this time Mattie so close-pressed behind Techie that his chin hooked over Gala's shoulder.

There in the almost-dark they flushed themselves pink, warm, and fast-breathing with sweet-whispered filth.

"—and I'd lick you out again baby, lick you so, so long."

Gala fisted the railing, rubbed his ass in tiny swipes against Matt's cock. "…your come…dripping down my thighs?"

The sound Matt made in Techie's ear was childish-high and desperate. "Yes!"

Clutching the hands that crossed tight over his chest, Techie crooned. "Mmm, I want to be wet with it."

They didn't need the gloaming for these whispers. Like roots at last reaching water, each has found what he needs in the other and there is no shyness any more.

About anything.

"Love you Mattie, Mattie my sweaty sweet perfect giant."

Deep below floor plates a hum pitched higher, engines whirring to life in preparation to raise the 'sun.'

"Love you love you need you," Techie said reaching back, turning his face and snuffle-laughing damp kisses across Matt's cheek. "Love you," he said again and again and then, "keep you."

"Keep me."

Right there, as those distant engines thrummed, each man thought the same thinky thought at the same time and both knew they should say it to be sure, so they did, words tumbling one over the other. "Can I?" "Will you?" "Yes please." "Pleaseplease."

Then in a jumble each understands as vows they whisper, "Yours mine me you now always please yes."

And from that day—for the lights have flickered full on over a vast garden—Matthew and Galacian are bound one to the other.

That was the first time Techie and Mattie wed.

There have been others.

The wedding high over a waterfall, where a frigid updraft gave Mattie gasping hiccups and Techie chattering teeth? That brought out a fierce protectiveness and growling promises. _Protect you keep you shelter hold close always…yes, yes, yes._

The one that legally united was big and little both, with barely a dozen guests but three times that many musicians because Gala's mother is not only a legendary gasan string drum player, she is also a woman with many friends, most who've held Techie since he was fat-bellied small and inclined to pee on the unwary.

The ceremony took place in the dome-covered Cylinian Gardens, the ginger groom in golds and greens, the blond in blacks and silver, the Endiary priest in that caste's long, blue robes. There was a day-long drunken party after.

After that and before and through all their years there have been solemn vows exchanged in bed after particularly stunning orgasms, there have been weddings across a mess hall table where both stare at their plates trying to figure out if they're also apologizing. Galacian Asha'Techk has married Matthew Kee on his fifty-second life day and Matthew Kee has married Galacian Asha'Techk to celebrate the making of some really fantastic salt nettle muffins.

Each wedding is different, some silly strange, others serious fine and for as long as they have words, or fingers that can dance words over bare skin, this is one of so many ways that Mattie and Techie will say and say and say for all their years…

_You me mine us always and forever._

_—_   
_"Everyday ceremonies, married again and again and again, whenever they say the words…" said Noadventureshere and that sounded so like Gala and his Mattie._


	29. Rose-Colored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Glasses:_
> 
> "Stop yelling!"
> 
> About to yell, Techie took a deep breath and didn't. He reran his and Matt's conversation in his head. Saw the point at which they went ass-up.
> 
> "Mattie."
> 
> The big man with the sweet diminutive frowned.
> 
> "Mattie, your glasses are how you look to me, too. I don't want you to change. But..."

Glasses are old-fashioned, Matt knows that.

But his vision's always been fine except just…that tiny touch of not enough.

So though he doesn't really need his glasses much, Mattie kind of needs them. They give him that small nudge so his big fingers can fiddle careful with little things. The prescription's so slight he can wear the glasses all the time. So he does.

Somehow doing that has just always been easier than the surgery. He knows it's a matter of minutes, that the droids do it all day, just a little flick, a hair-thin slip of transparisteel inserted and your eyes are fixed. It's not like he hasn't had worse procedures. That time a repeater snapped off its mount and the jagged edge went clean through his shoulder? Well you can't bacta _that_ better, you have to let the med droids at you.

So not having the eye surgery has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with…

"…I don't know baby." Matt wriggled his bare body up, pressed his cheek against Gala's stomach. "I guess after all this time, this is just how I look to me."

Gala understands that. His own crazy eyebrows which he _could_ trim but doesn't, hair that's more finger-fiddled nest than neat, he gets it, the need to see ourselves the way we _see_ ourselves. And for him, Mattie lipping the stem of his glasses, pushing them up his nose with his palm, that big beautiful face framed with its wire-frames…these are how Mattie looks to Techie, too.

But something's different.

"You're eyes aren't like they were Mattie," Galacian says.

Matt shifts. His hair kind of…unsticks from Gala's belly. He looks down and yep the come has well and truly dried now, and Gala's happy trail is all spiky. Matt smile-nuzzles, "What do you mean baby?"

Gala twitches ticklish, tries clamping his legs closed but two hundred plus pounds of naked man prevent this. He tugs Mattie up by his ears. "You'll be forty-six soon."

On graceless, orgasm-loose limbs, Mattie follows his captured ears and collapses his big body beside Gala. Turning, deep breathing the scent of sex all over Mattie's skin, Gala murmurs, "Your eyes are getting older."

Fuzzy-dreamy-happy in their warm bed and sassy with sleepiness, Matt humps Gala's thigh. "You seemed pretty pleased just now with the rest of me."

Techie is was and ever shall be pleased with Matt. From his laugh lines to his giant hands, from the way he drools in his sleep to the way he cuddles in it, too.

But there are things. Things that need addressing. And so Techie's going to address them.

"Mattie, you tried to fuck my mole."

He'd been tip-toeing toward a dozy sort of inattention had Matt, allowing Gala's murmurs to turn into pretty white noise. He knows that was kind of rude but, to be fair, Gala's actually and literally fallen asleep _on top of Matt_ in the middle of a conversation.

But that…

_Mattie, you tried to fuck my mole_

…that woke Matt right up. He sighed. Then he did it again for good measure because yes. He had. He had tried to fuck Gala's mole.

To be fair their bedroom lights had been at five percent, making everything—including the crack of Gala's ass—kind of shadowy.

To be even more fair, Matt was in a hurry because Techie was in a hurry, trousers only half shucked as he bent over their bed, holding his own cheeks open and panting, "Get that thing in me Mattie, in me now, now, now."

And finally, Mattie had only poked Gala's mole—right there in the valley between those pulled-wide cheeks— _one time_ before squinting his way further south, impaling his darling deep, to much grunting praise.

However, Techie's point was well-made.

"Yeah okay, my eyes have got worse. I'll make an appointment." Mashing his yawning face against Gala's chest he mumbled, "And at least now you won't wake up with weird bruises when I fall asleep with my glasses on."

Techie sighed and hummed an affirmation…

…and then pulled Matt away by an ear. "What?"

Matt batted Gala's hand and echoed, "What?"

"Why won't you…what?"

"You just asked me to get the surgery to fix my eyes didn't you? I won't need the glasses if I do that."

"No!"

"You just complained I tried to fuck your mole!"

"I did not!"

"Are you—"

"—I said I finally realized your vision's getting worse _because_ you tried to fuck my mole!"

"That's what I just said!"

"I didn't ask you to go get lenses put in your eyes!"

"Stop yelling!"

About to yell, Techie took a deep breath and didn't. He reran their conversation in his head. Saw the point at which they went ass-up.

"Mattie."

The big man with the sweet diminutive frowned.

"Mattie, your glasses are how you look to _me,_ too. I don't want you to change. I just thought maybe a new prescription would be good." Techie kissed Matt's eyelids. "If you want."

Mattie finger fiddled the come-stiff hair on Gala's belly, then frowned. Right above that perfect pale ginger trail was a faded purple mark. Matt had fallen asleep in Techie's lap the week previous, face mashed into his love's soft belly while he read. For days Mattie had apologized about the bruise in that tender flesh. Gala heals so slowly.

"I'll make an appointment," Matt said. He could get used to looking some other way. He'll get those little discs put in, the ones that'd give him perfect eyesight forever.

He followed when Gala tugged him near by his ear, mashed his face against his love's chest, smiled fuzzy-dreamy-happy when Techie whispered, "You can still fuck my mole though, okay? It tickles."

—  
 _I've had a chipped tooth since I was nine and despite every dentist in the world telling me it can be fixed, that tooth looks like me to me. Mattie doesn't want to fix his eyes with space lasik because those glasses look like him to him. And Techie loves his him. Aren't_ we _lucky?_


	30. Wait and See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Eyes:_
> 
> He remembers the color of his birth eyes exactly, Techie does.
> 
> Isn't that weird, to remember something from so long ago?

Techie got new eyes a couple years after he and Matt married.

It was awful.

Totally

completely

hair-pullingly

_awful._

Because…because…before the operation? Before they took out those old mech eyes and gave him something beautiful and new, before that, all Techie could think about was which color

which color

_which color?_

Should his new eyes be green? Or blue? Green or blue? Greenorbluegreenorblue? Kriffing green or pfassking blue? Because, _because,_ the thing is, when he was born, when Gala was a babe all burbles and toothless gums, his eyes were—

"—the most precious green, baby boy. This sweet pale-dark-prism green that your da and I were crazy for. We'd kiss your eyelids over and over."

He remembers the color of his birth eyes exactly, Techie does, and isn't that weird, to really, really remember the color of your own eyes? But his hair's always been so brightly red and people used to tell him eyes like his belonged with hair like that, so Techie always knew his eyes were a rare-fine green, it wasn't something he ever forgot, like one can sometimes forget their own moles or crooked teeth.

Then when he was fourteen the Vongspawn virus took his eyes.

He was lucky, Techie was, that his mam had a good job to make the money for new eyes, that they lived where he could _get_ them, but this was, kriff, it was twenty-six years ago and after his da died and the tech was still new and it was great, but it was _blue._ The only eyes Gala could get were blue with pupils and irises so big they click-click-whirred.

He loved them. Of course he did. Blindness for a near-year had made sure of that, and to be honest Galacian never thought twice that they changed his face, that he looked, just a bit and only sometimes, like a mech. He could see, and that was enough.

So yeah, that was years ago and the tech's much better now and now it's time. Almost since the moment they met Mattie, beautiful Mattie, has wanted to help Gala get new eyes to replace the worn-out old, the ones that give Techie migraines sometimes, make him sore-weary others, the ones that look so artificial that it's just not funny anymore how often people think it's okay to come close and peer or point.

But for the pfassking love of _kriff_ which color should the new eyes be? Green like his birth eyes or the blue he's known most of his life?

"Blue Mattie? D'you think blue? That's what they should be right? They've been blue as long as you've known me, that's the color you fell in love wi—"

"No."

Techie didn't turn from the computer guts he had spread across their quarters so Matt said it again, louder. "No. I did not fall in love with an eye color, Galacian Asha'Techk."

Techie cocked his head, a curtain of red hair hiding the click-click-whirring until a toss of his head flicked it away. "Excuse _you."_

Mattie made a face. "For all I care your eyes could be Chiss red and your hair Belthor blue. I didn't fall in love with any of _that,_ I fell in love with _you,_ you skinny little Lleev worm."

Techie launched himself at Mattie and with an "oomph" and a giggle they both fell to the floor amidst a flurry of soft bites.

Alas, despite reassurances, Techie's obsession did not fade and in the weeks leading up to the operation he continued to ask everyone.

Green? Or blue?

Greenorblue _greenorblue?_

Everyone had an opinion because Gala would stand there click-whirring at them until they did, but it wasn't until he'd cornered the mess hall lieutenant with heterochromia—one of her eyes green as any Human's, the other Chissian red—that Techie finally decided.

"One of each," he told Matt at dinner that night. "I'm getting one of each."

Matt blinked a couple times, each time flicking his gaze from one of Gala's eyes to the other. Then he grinned big and kissed between them. "That's perfect. Which one will be which baby?"

Techie blinked at Matt. And blinked. And—

"God fucking _damn it."_

The next six days were awful.

Totally

completely

hair-pullingly

_awful._

Which eye should be blue? Which eye should be green? Whichonewhichone?

And so went another half dozen days of Gala cornering any Sentient on board the _Accord_ who'd stand still long enough. Even still, Techie wasn't sure right up until just a few hours before the operation. It was about that time he talked to that mess hall looey again with her mismatched eyes and he finally figured it out.

The whole operation took just over one hour. The med droids told Matt everything went perfectly and Techie'd wake within minutes.

So Mattie sat cross-legged on Techie's starched bed and he held both his husband's hands and he smiled at his skinny little worm, idly wondering which eye would be green and which blue and knew he didn't care just so long as they never hurt again, not ever.

It took Techie a little more than a few minutes to wake. Matt teased him about that. "My lazy little worm" he said over and over, mostly because it was the only way he could manage not to cry. Except Matt cried anyway.

Because Techie's new optics, they'll be with him for the rest of his life. Once he realized that, then realized how often he'll look at his own reflection—so very often, for a man must do so if he's to primp himself fine with all the pretty gems and beads and clothes his husband gives him—Techie knew he wanted to look into the eyes of comfort and peace, of shelter and love.

Mattie's eyes are brown.

So now Techie's are, too.

—  
_Holy hell I love them so much. I love them. I hope you enjoyed this wee journey through my head canon for Techie and Matt. I will write them again and again. Because I love them. Tell me what you think of these stories please. Your comments large or small? Do please leave them; they will be doted upon, utterly_ doted _upon. P.S. I've got[lots more stories](http://archiveofourown.org/series/495943) about these [beautiful boys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7377706/chapters/16758544)._


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